A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



WORKS BY H. RIDER HAGGARD 

CETYWAYO AND HIS WHITE NEIGHBOURS. 
DAWN. 

THE WITCH'S HEAD. 
KING SOLOMON'S MINES. 
SHE. 
JESS. 

ALLAN QUATERMAIN. 

MAIWA'S REVENGE. 

MR. MEESON'S WILL. 

COLONEL QUARITCH, V.C. 

CLEOPATRA. 

ALLAN'S WIFE. 

BEATRICE. 

ERIC BRIGHTEYES. 

NADA THE LILY. 

MONTEZUMA'S DAUGHTER. 

THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST. 

JOAN HASTE. 

HEART OF THE WORLD. 

DOCTOR THERNE. 

SWALLOW. 

BLACK HEART AND WHITE HEART. 

LYSBETH. 

A FARMER'S YEAR. 

(IN COLLABORATION WITH ANDRE IF LANG) 
THE WORLD'S DESIRE. 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 

Being an Account of Travels through 
PALESTINE, ITALY, and the ISLAND OF 
CYPRUS, accomplished in the Year 1900 



By 

H. RIDER HAGGARD 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
I9OI 



All rights reserved 



' 2. 



1 offer these Pages 
to 

Mn. & Mrs. HART BENNETT 

and all other Cyprian friends 
whose hospitalities and kindness 
have made my sojourn in the 
Island so pleasant 
to remember 



Ditehingham, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. Milan Cathedral ...... 1 

II. A Tuscan Wine-Farm 13 

III. FlESOLE AND FLORENCE ..... 27 

IV. Pompeii 37 

V. Naples to Larnaca 52 

VI. Colossi . . 66 

VII. A Cypriote Wedding 78 

VIII. Amathus 92 

IX. Curium 109 

X. LlMASOL TO ACHERITOU . . ' . .124 

XI. Famagusta .141 

XII. The Siege and Salamis 157 

XIII. Nicosia and Kyrenia . . . . .175 

XIV. Beyrout, Tyre, and Sidon . . . .188 
XV. Nazareth and Tiberias 203 

XVI. The Sea of Galilee . .' . . .221 
XVII. Tabor, Carmel, and Acre .... 236 

XVIII. Jaffa 257 

XIX. The Noble Sanctuary, the Pools of Solomon, 

and Bethlehem 272 

XX. Jericho, The Dead Sea, Bethany, and Solo- 
mon's Quarries 288 

XXI. Gordon's Tomb and Golgotha .... 305 
XXII. The Church of the Sepulchre . . .319 
XXIII. The Mount of Olives and The Wailing of 

the Jews 334 

vii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Cathedral of St. Sophia, Famagusta . . . Frontispiece 
Tombstone of the Cardinal Leonardo Buonafede To face page. 17 
Brass Lamp-Holder from the Chapel of the 

Family Luperelli-Pitti in Corona „ „ 20 

Curtain Wall, Famagusta „ „ 65 

Tower of Colossi ' . „ „ 75 

Cyprian Farriers „ „ 88 

Cyprian Boot-Shop „ „ 91 

On Trooidos „ .,112 

Wall of New Reservoir, Acheritod ...„., 139 
Ancient Sluice Gate at Acheritou „ 139 

Desdemona's Tower, Famagusta , ,,153 

Ruins of Ancient Church, Famagusta „ „ 153 

St. Hilarion „ ,,176 

Monastery of Bella Pais ,, ,,178 

Heights of Hilarion „ „ 181 

Venetian Fortress, Kyrenia „ „ 181 

Door of St. Nicholas, Nicosia ....„„ 187 

Our Cavalcade „ „ 203 

Mary's Well, Nazareth „ „ 203 

Boat on the Sea of Galilee ....,,„ 221 

Site of Capernaum „ „ 224 

Mount Tabor „ „ 234 

Roman Catholic Convent with Ruins on Mount 

Tabor . . „ ,,234 

Shepherd Carrying a Lost Sheep . . . „ „ 246 

The River Jordan „ 246 

Site of the Temple of the Jews ....„,, 270 
Interior of the Noble Sanctuary, showing the 

Sacred Rock . ....„„ 272 

The Golden Gate „ 279 

View on the Road to Jericho ....„,, 292 
The only House by the Dead Sea . . . „ „ 292 
The Place of Stoning , „ 308 

viii 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



CHAPTER I 

MILAN CATHEDRAL 

Surely Solomon foresaw these days when he set down 
that famous saying as to the making of many books. 
The aphorism, I confess, is one which strikes me through 
with shame whenever I chance to be called upon to read 
it aloud in the parish church on Sunday. Indeed it 
suggests to me a tale which has a moral — or a parallel. 
Some months ago I tarried at Haifa, a place on the coast 
of Syria with an abominable port. It was at or about 
the hour of midnight that a crowd of miserable travellers, 
of whom I was one, might have been seen cowering in 
the wind and rain at the gates of this harbour. There 
the judge and the officer bullied and rent them, causing 
them to fumble with damp hands and discover their 
tezkerehs in inaccessible pockets, which they did that the 
account given in those documents of their objects, occu- 
pations, past history, and personal appearance might be 
verified by a drowsy Turk seated in a box upon the 
quay. Not until he was satisfied on all these points, 
indeed, would he allow them the privilege of risking 
death by drowning in an attempt to reach a steamer 
which rolled outside the harbour. 

At length the ordeal was done with and we were 
informed that we might embark. That is to say, we 
were graciously permitted to leap five feet from an unlit 

A 



2 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



pier — the steps of which had been washed away in the 
gale of the previous night, but will, I am informed, be 
repaired next season — trusting to Providence to cause us 
to fall into a dark object beneath believed to be a boat. 
Another Turkish officer watched our departure sus- 
piciously, though what he imagined we could be carrying 
out of his barren land is beyond my guessing. 

" Cook, Cook, Cook ! " we croaked in deprecatory tones 
as one by one we crept past him cowed and cold, fearing 
that he might invent some pretext to detain us. There- 
fore it was indeed that we hurried to bring to his notice 
the only name which seems to have power in Syria; 
that famous name of the hydra-headed, the indispens- 
able, the world-wide Cook. 

" Cook, Cook, Cook ! " we croaked. 

" Oh ! yes," answered the exasperated Turk in a tone 
not unlike that of a sleepy pigeon, " Coook, Coook, Coook ! 
oh yes, all right ! Coook, always Coook ! Go to — Jericho 
—Coook ! " 

In the same way and with much the same feelings, 
thinking of the long line of works before me, I mutter to 
the reader now, " Book, Book, Book ! " 

Can he be so rude as to answer, after the example of 
the Haifa Turk— 

" Oh ! yes, all right ! Boook, &c. &c." The thought 
is too painful : I leave it. 

To be brief, I write for various reasons. Thus from 
the era of the " Bordeau Pilgrim " who wrote in the 
year 333, the very first of those who set on paper his 
impressions of the Holy Land, to this day, from time to 
time among those who have followed in his steps, some 
have left behind them accounts of what they saw and 
what befell them. The list is long. There are St. Sylvia, 
and the holy Paula ; Arculfus and St. Wilibad, Mukadasi 
and Bernard the Wise; Ssewulf and the Abbot Daniel; 
Phocas the Cretan and Theodoric ; Felix Fabri ; Sir J ohn 
Mandeville, de la Brocquiere and Maundrell — and so on 



MILAN CATHEDRAL 



3 



down to Chateaubriand and our own times. But one thing 
they had in common. They — or most of them — were 
driven on by the same desire. Obedient to a voice that calls 
in the heart of so many, they travelled by land and sea to 
look upon the place where Jesus Christ was born — where 
the Master of mankind hung upon His cross at Calvary. 

I will confess that I have a fancy to be numbered 
among their honourable company. So it may chance — this 
is my hope — that when another thousand years or more 
have gone by advancing the Holy Land thus far upon 
its appointed future, and the Moslem has ceased to occupy 
the sacred places, my name may appear with their 
names. Thus perhaps I also may be accounted a link in 
the chain of those who dedicated some of their uncertain 
days to visiting and describing that grey stretch of moun- 
tain land which is the cradle of man's hope in the dark- 
ness that draws near to every one of us. 

My second reason is that I should like to say 
something about that neglected British possession, the 
fair island of Cyprus. To-day a Cinderella among our 
colonies, with a little more care — and capital — she 
might again become what she was of old, the Garden 
of the Mediterranean, a land of corn and wine, and in 
fact, as well as figuratively, a mine of wealth. Of Cyprus 
but few have written ; travellers rarely think it worth the 
while to visit there, so in this particular at the least 
I trust that I may not be blamed. 

There is, further, a last argument or excuse which 
I will venture to use, because it seems to me to have 
a very wide application, far wider, indeed, than is neces- 
sary to the instance of these humble pages. It is the 
fashion nowadays to say that everything is hackneyed ; 
that the East itself, for instance, is practically exhausted ; 
that the reader, who perchance has never travelled 
further than Ramsgate, can have little more to learn 
therefrom. " Give us some new thing," cries the tired 
world, as the Athenians cried of old. They ask in vain, 



4 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



on this side the grave there is no new thing. We 
must make the best of the old material or give up 
thinking and reading, and the seeing of sights. Yet 
what a fallacy underlies the surface meaning of these 
words. Is not everything new to the eyes that can see 
and the ears that can hear? Are there not joys and 
wonders about us by the thousand which, being so blind 
and deaf, we seldom seize or value ? 

Oh, jaded reader, go stand in a garden as I did 
to-night and watch the great cold moon creep up 
beyond the latticed trees, while the shadows grow before 
her feet. Listen to the last notes of the thrush that 
sways on the black bough of yonder beech, singing, 
with a heart touched by the breath of spring, such a 
song as God alone could teach her. And there, in the 
new-found light, look down at those pale flowers. Or 
if you prefer it, stand upon them, they are only prim- 
roses, that, as Lord Beaconsfield discovered, are very good 
in salad. 

To drop the poetical — and the ultra-practical, which 
is worse — and take a safer middle way, I cannot for 
my part believe that this old world is so exhausted after 
all. I think that there is still plenty to be seen and 
more to be learned even at that Ramsgate of which I 
spoke just now. Therefore I will try to describe a few 
of the things I saw last winter as I saw them, and to 
chronicle their meanings as I caught and understood 
them, hoping that some will yet be found for whom they 
may have interest. 

"Upon a certain foggy winter morning we stood 
at Charing Cross Station en route for Italy, Cyprus, and 
Syria, via the St. Gothard, &c." 

This, surely, is how I should begin, for it is bold 
to break away from the accepted formula of books of 
travel consecrated by decades of publication. 

Still let me do so, and before we leave it, look round 
the station. It is a horrible, reeking place, Heaven 



MILAN CATHEDRAL 



5 



knows, on such a morning as this of which I write. The 
most common of sights to the traveller also, and one of 
the most unnoticed. And yet how interesting. In a 
sense even it is majestic. The great arching roof, a very 
cave of the winds; the heavy pencils of shadow flung 
across its grey expanse; the grimy, pervading mist; the 
lumps of black smoke edged with white propelled labori- 
ously upwards ; the fierce, sharp jets of steam ; the 
constant echo of the clanging noises : the sense of bitted 
force in those animate machines that move in and out, 
vanishing there into the wet mist, appearing here in 
the soot-streaked gloom. Then the population of this 
vast unfriendly place, the servants of the great engines, 
and those whom the engines bear on their way to many 
lands. They come, they go, those multitudinous forms ; 
they are seen, they disappear, those various faces, each of 
them, if you watch, dominated by some individual note — 
grief, joy, expectancy, regret, ennui even, as may chance. 

That train steams out, and those who clustered round 
it have melted like last night's snow. Some it has borne 
away; some, friends and spectators, having waved their 
last farewell, are departed upon their affairs. Now a 
new train arrives ; other crowds appear, drawn from the 
vast reservoir of London, and with variations the scene 
repeats itself. This time we take an active part in the 
play, and presently steam out into the billows of black 
mist and are lost behind the curtain of the swinging 
rain. There beneath us runs the inky Thames, sombre, 
mysterious-looking even, and to the eye, notwithstanding 
its creeping squalor — though why this should be so it is 
hard to say — endued with a grandeur that is not the 
property of many a nobler stream. 

Next appear countless, sordid houses, the crowded, 
monotonous homes, if homes they can be called, for 
which tens of thousands of Englishmen abandon the 
wholesome country-side and the pure air of heaven, 
because — for those who can get it — here in London the 



6 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



wage is higher. They are done with. Now in their 
place is stretched the open English landscape, wet and 
wretched, its green fields showing almost grey beneath 
the embracing, ashen sky, the trees mere black blots, 
the roads yellow lines of mud. Yet in its own way 
it is beautiful, all of it, as the face of Nature is ever 
beautiful to those who love her, and knowing her moods, 
can sympathise with them and catch something of their 
meaning. 

So through these familiar things onward to the sea. 

" Moderate " was the report of the Channel weather 
at Charing Cross, which, as the Station-master explained 
mysteriously, might mean a good deal. In fact we find 
it blowing a gale, for the spray drives right over the train 
on to the unhappy passengers as they splash towards the 
boat quivering and livid, some of them, with anticipatory 
qualms. But the history of a bad crossing may well be 
spared. The boat did get out and it was accomplished 
— at a price — that is all. 

If I were asked to devise a place of punishment 
for sinners of what I may chance to consider the 
direst degree, a first-class continental hotel is the 
purgatorial spot to which I would commit them — for a 
century at a time. Yes, and thither they should travel 
once a month (with a family) in the waggon-lit of a train 
de luxe with all the steam-pipes turned on. And yet 
there are people who like hotels. I have known some 
wanderers even who inhabit them from choice. Ameri- 
cans, too, are very happy there. Strange it is that folk 
can be so differently constituted. Rather would I dwell 
— for a life choice — in a cottage in the country on a 
pound a week than free in those foreign, gorgeous hostel- 
ries, where every decoration strikes you like a blow, 
surrounded by hard servility on fire for unearned fees, 
fed with messes such as the soul loathes, and quailing 
beneath the advancing shadow of a monstrous bill. The 
subject is a large one — it should be treated fitly in a 



MILAN CATHEDRAL 



7 



book. " Hotel life and its influence on human character " 
would do for the title. 

I think that I must have been somewhat unfortunate 
in my experiences of continental travel — a kind of rail- 
way Jonah. The last time that I made this Italian 
journey, for instance, at two minutes' notice my fellow- 
voyagers and I, in the exact dead of night, were dragged 
from our sleeping-berths, and on the top of the Alps 
in the midst of the snows of winter, were transferred to 
an icy railway-carriage with such of our belongings as we 
could grasp. One lady, I remember, in her hurry, lost 
a valuable sable cloak. The reason alleged for this per- 
formance was that the wheels of our sleeping-car had 
become heated, but the conductor informed me that the 
real cause was a quarrel between the directors of two 
lines of railway. Thrice in succession, it would appear, 
and at this very spot had the wheels become " heated," 
and the travellers torn half-awakened from their berths. 

On the present occasion we met with a somewhat 
similar experience. Leaving Basle in the hope and ex- 
pectation of reaching Milan that night, at Lucerne we 
were informed that the St. Gothard was blocked by a 
train which had gone off the line. So in that beautiful 
but cold and expensive town we must remain for four- 
and-twenty hours. 

Once I climbed the St. Gothard, now over thirty 
years ago, when a brother and I walked from Fluellen 
to the top of the pass with the purpose of bidding fare- 
well to another brother who was travelling across it by 
coach upon his way to India. In those far-off days 
there was no railway, and the tunnel was not even 
completed. I recollect little of the trudge except that 
I grew footsore, and that my brother and senior by a 
year or two sang songs to me to keep up my spirits. 
About half-way up the pass we slept at some village on 
the road. Here the innkeeper had a pretty servant who 
— strange entertainment — took us to a charnel-house 



8 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



attached to the church, where amongst many others she 
pointed out a shining skull which she informed us was 
that of her own father. This skull and its polished 
appearance I remember well ; also some other incidents 
connected with the arrival and departure of the coach 
upon the summit. 

Of the scenery, however, I recall little or nothing — I 
do not think that views have great attractions for youth, 
at any rate they had few for me. When I was a " soaring 
human boy " my father took me up the Rhine by boat 
with the hope and expectation that my mind would be 
improved in contemplating its lovely and historic banks. 
Wearying of this feast, very soon I slipped down to the 
cabin to enjoy one more congenial, that of " Robinson 
Crusoe," in a Tauchnitz edition. But some family traitor 
betrayed me, and protesting, even with tears, that " I 
hated views," I was dragged to the deck again. " I have 
paid six thaler s," shouted my justly indignant parent, as 
he hauled me up the steamer stairs, " for you to study 
the Rhine scenery, and whether you like it or not, young 
man, study it you shall / " That was — eheu fugaces lahuntur 
anni ! — in or about 1 867. 

To return to the year 1900, so it came about that to 
all intents and purposes, the St. Gothard was to me a new 
experience. Therefore I was the more disappointed when 
on steaming out of Lucerne station we found ourselves 
in the midst of a raging snowstorm, so fierce and thick 
indeed that I began to fear that for a second time we 
should be stopped in our attempt to cross the Alps. 

Yet that snow had its compensations, for in it the 
observer understood, better perhaps than he might other- 
wise have done, the vastness of the panorama which 
lay outstretched beneath him. First, all seen through 
that veil of flying flakes, appear forests of firs growing 
tier above tier upon the face of a precipice so steep that 
almost it might be a titanic wall. Then the pines 
vanish and are replaced by thousands of delicate birch- 



MILAN CATHEDRAL 



9 



trees, hanging like white hair about some bald, gigantic 
head, while beneath them roars a torrent, its waters 
cream-thick with snow. These vanish also as the white 
curtain grows too dense for the eye to pierce. Suddenly 
it thins and lifts, and there, far down below, appears a 
toy town with a toy wood-built church. Next an enor- 
mous gulf, and in its depths a torrent raging. And 
always a sense of mountains, invisible indeed but over- 
hanging, impending, vast. 

Now a little hut is seen and by it a blue-robed 
woman, signal-flag in hand. There, heedless of the bitter 
wind and weather she stands, like the wife of Lot, stone- 
still and white with snow. We rush past her into mile 
upon mile of tunnel, to pull up at last by some little 
mountain station where the drifts lie deep. 

Here I beheld an instance of true politeness. Two 
Italian gentlemen, one old, one young, were engaged at 
the useful task of clearing the rails with long-handled 
shovels and depositing the snow in barrows for removal. 
Presently the younger of the pair, giving way to some 
sudden sportive impulse, shot a whole spadeful of snow 
over his companion's head. Imagine how such an unex- 
pected compliment would have been received by the 
average English navvy ! Next morning the police-courts 
would have rung with it. As it was, remembering the 
fiery southern blood, I expected to see knives flash in 
the mountain air. But not so. The older person merely 
coughed, shook the snow from his grizzled locks, and 
with a deep bow and splendid sweeping gesture — pointed 
to the barrow. Could reproof have been more gentle or 
more effective ? 

Beyond the tunnels to our joy the snow is much 
thinner, mere patches indeed, lying in the hollows of 
enormous bold-shouldered mountains whose steep flanks 
are streaked with white ropes of water, or here and there 
by the foam of some great fall. In the kloofs also cling 
lumps and lines of dense mist, like clouds that have sunk 



10 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



from heaven and rested there. Down in the valley where 
the railway runs, begin to appear evidences of a milder 
climate, for vines, grown upon a trellis-work of poles, are 
seen in plots, and by the stream bank flourish willows, 
alders, and poplars. So through changing scenes we run 
southwards into Italy and welcome a softer air. 

I have visited many cathedrals in various parts of 
the world, but I cannot remember one that struck me 
more than the interior of that of Milan, which I now 
explored for the first time. I say the interior advisedly, 
since the exterior, with its unnumbered pinnacles and 
thousands of statues, does not particularly appeal to my 
taste in architecture, such as it may be. The grand 
proportions of the building as viewed from within, the tall 
fluted columns, the rich windows, the lace-worked roof of 
the marble dome — an effect produced by painting, as a 
loquacious and disturbing cicerone insisted upon inform- 
ing us, with many other details which we did not seek — 
the noble cruciform design ; all such beauties are familiar 
to many readers and doubtless may be equalled, if not 
surpassed, elsewhere. As it happened, however, we found 
more thaD these, or being fortunate in the time and 
circumstances of our visit, to me they suggested more. 

Passing the ancient door from the busy piazza where 
electric cars glide up and down continually like mis- 
shapen boats with bells fixed in front of them, and 
pushing aside the heavy curtain of leather, of a sudden 
we stood in another world. Life and death could scarcely 
be more different. Vast spaces, very dim, for it was 
four o'clock on a winter's day, full of shadow and a 
certain majestic emptiness. Column upon column, more 
than the eye could number, and above, the scarce-seen, 
arching roof. In the far distance of the apse something 
white about the sanctuary, in fact a great veil of which 
I do not know the use or symbolical significance, but 
from where we saw it first, suggesting the appearance of 
the white wings of some angel cherishing the altar of his 



MILAN CATHEDRAL 



11 



God. Then upon that altar itself twinkling sparks of 
light, and, swinging high in front of it, near to the 
towering roof indeed, like some sleepless eye watching 
from above, another starry lamp. 

Along the vast nave, down the empty aisles creeps 
the stately, measured music of the organ. Now quite 
suddenly sweet voices take up their chant and the offer- 
ing of song arises, falls to rise again, till slowly its echoes 
faint and die in the spaces of the dome. As we draw 
near through the cold and perfumed gloom, priests be- 
come visible, robed in white vestments and moving 
to and fro about the shrine. Others also, or may be 
they are acolytes, pass from time to time down through 
the sparse congregation into the body of the church and 
there vanish to right or left. 

The invisible censers swing, we hear their clank- 
ing chains and perceive the clouds of incense which 
float upwards one by one, past the tall lights of the 
candles. The voices chant still more sweetly and the 
music of the organ sinks low as though it too were 
human, and knew that in such a hallowed dusk and 
silence it is well to whisper. The bright-robed priests, 
from time to time breaking in upon the ceremonial with 
utterances of their own that are scarcely less harmonious, 
move mysteriously, waving their hands like to the officers 
of some gorgeous, magic incantation, till at length — let 
him confess it — the mind of the observer softens and he 
understands, even sympathises with, much at which he 
has been wont to smile, and presently will smile again. 
Great is the Church of Rome, who knows so well how to 
touch our nature on its mystic side and through it reach 
the heart. 

To all this solemn splendour there were but few 
spectators. The scanty audience of worshippers, or such 
of them as sat outside the choir and could be easily 
observed, consisted for the greater part of aged men. 
Among these one old gentleman — I should put his years 



12 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



at eighty — attracted my particular attention. His face 
was still handsome and sharply cut, his short hair snow- 
white, and his appearance that of one who had been a 
soldier. Most noticeable, however, was the extraordinary 
earnestness and devotion of his bearing. His presence 
there could be no perfunctory observance, this was easy 
to be seen. Easy was it to guess also that this man 
from whom, many as they had been, the sands of life 
were ebbing fast, appreciated the fateful truth only 
too keenly, and, while time remained to him, was en- 
deavouring with a desperate vigour, through the avenues 
provided by his Church, to win the freedom of a more 
abiding city. The whole tragic story was written there, 
in those upturned tearful eyes, those clasped and trem- 
bling hands upon which even in that half light the blue 
veins showed, and on the worn features so purified by time, 
loss, and sorrow that no beauty of their youth could rival 
them to-day. A pathetic sight indeed, rightly studied 
and understood, suggesting many thoughts, but one 
frequent enough in such places. 

So farewell to Milan cathedral, its music, priests, and 
mystery. Farewell also to that sad old worshipper whose 
face I shall not see again, and who for his part will never 
know that the Englishman standing by his side there 
upon a certain winter evening took note of him and 
wondered. 



CHAPTER II 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 

For generations past, visitors to Italy have written about 
Florence. Therefore, mindful of a certain saying, I pro- 
pose to leave that noble army unrecruited. Here the 
reader will find no account of the architecture of its 
cathedrals ; no list of the best pictures, no raptures over 
the loveliness of Giotto's Campanile — a building, by the 
way, that grows very much upon the observer, or at least, 
upon this observer — whose charm also varies more with 
the conditions of the light than any other with which 
I am acquainted. 

Still a few general remarks may be permitted; for 
instance on the climate, which is the common property 
of every traveller and requires no critical training to 
appreciate. What a climate it is — in the month of 
January — or can be, for with my common evil chance it 
appears that we " happened on," as they say in Norfolk, 
the worst winter experienced in Tuscany for many, many 
years. Such was ever my fortune ! Once I went to 
Iceland to fish for salmon, a country where habitually 
it pours, but the summer proved the driest that had been 
known for decades. To the ordinary traveller this would 
have been a satisfactory circumstance, to the seeker after 
salmon, which love a swollen river, it was disastrous. 
Other notable instances occur to me but I pass them 
by, for, according to the accounts of all inhabitants of the 
places visited, these misfortunes are common to voyaging 
mankind. 

Within the space of a single month we enjoyed at 

13 



14 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Florence piercing gales — tramontane is the local name, 
which reminded me of winds I have felt blowing straight 
off the pack ice in northern latitudes and nothing else — 
fogs that would have done no discredit to London in 
November, and rains whereof the tropics might be proud. 
When the tramontane in its glory leaps and howls along 
the dusky streets of Florence, then indeed does the 
traveller think with a repentant affection of the very 
bleakest spot he knows upon England's eastern shores, 
yes, even on the bitterest day of March. 

Is there anything in the wind line quite so deadly 
cold, I wonder ? At least clothes cannot prevail against 
it, for wrap yourself up till you look like a very Falstaff 
and still the temperature within is that of a snow-man. 
To the bones it pierces, to the very marrow. Yet for 
generations these extraordinary Florentines built their 
houses without fireplaces. I remember noting the same 
phenomenon in Mexico City, another frigid spot; there, 
indeed, they swore that fires were unwholesome. Here 
the sole concession of a vast majority of the inhabi- 
tants to our common human weakness, consists of a 
scaldino, that is, a little pot full of glowing wood ashes 
which is placed under the owner's chair, or carried in 
any convenient fashion. Men, I gather, have not even 
the comfort of this instrument of joy, which among its 
many uses in the event of sickness, or of damp sheets, 
makes an excellent warming-pan. In this case it is sus- 
pended in a kind of enlarged wooden mouse-cage and 
plunged boldly between the blankets. Of all the domestic 
institutions in Tuscany, I think that the scaldino is most 
to be desired. There are others which strike me as far 
from admirable. 

I do not wish, however, to asperse this climate, 
against which I may have been more or less prejudiced 
by the prevalent influenza, which hit us rather hard. I am 
instructed indeed that except for certain, or uncertain, 
outbursts of cold, it is really beautiful in April and May, 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 15 



and even for the first part of June, after which it 
becomes too hot for the taste and comfort of most 
people. The autumns also are said to be fine. 

Moreover, it is only Florence itself that is so severe. 
During the first few weeks of my stay there I visited 
some country villas, one " two mountains beyond Fiesole " 
(that was the local description and means very high 
indeed), and another on the lower slopes of the same 
ancient city, which is built among the hill-tops about 
three miles to the north-east of Florence. At each of 
these villas I found the most lovely satisfying sunshine, 
in which a man might bask like a lizard till at length 
the chill left his bones. There I was told that the 
crowning joy to the dwellers in these mansions of the 
blest, is to sit in golden light on their verandahs and 
for quite a considerable portion of the winter look at 
a damp, dark cloud far below, which cloud is Florence 
hid in icy fog. Decidedly a villa at Fiesole, where 
the mists cannot creep and because of its sheltered 
position the tramontane has no power, is a possession 
to be coveted — far above a palace on the Arno. 

Yet when the winter voyager can forget the climate, 
what city has greater charm than Florence, if to some, 
its note seems one of melancholy ? Here, so pervading is 
its presence, history seems to press upon the student 
with an actual sense of weight. The numberless 
churches, some of them still unfinished ; the cold, 
stately palaces ; the public buildings and piazzas ; the 
statues, monuments, and pictures ; all things distinguish- 
ing and distinguished belonging for the most part, as 
they do, to a single century, seem to bring the dead 
time and those who shaped it as it was, so near to us 
that in its shadow the present is made mean and 
dwarfed. All the intervening generations that the locust 
has eaten, those dim, quite forgotten generations which 
once in their hour furnished the daily bread of Time, 
appear to drop away. In our garish modernity, wearing 



16 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



no wedding garment of their art, we find ourselves 
unbidden guests at this banquet of the past — face to 
face with the age of Donatello and Fra Bartolommeo 
and Savonarola and the great Medici, and of the rest who 
lived when Florence was in flower. The effect is strange. 
Perhaps it does not strike the Italian thus, or even those 
foreigners who are constant residents. Perhaps in this 
case also, such as seek find, and the period which gave 
Florence her glory, is the period which oppresses us now 
that her sons are no longer mighty preachers, painters, 
or architects. 

Why is it? Who can explain the mystery of the 
change ? Why, when we look into a picture or sculpture 
shop on the Lung' Arno, for instance, do we see on the 
one side replicas of the famous and beautiful antique ; 
and, on the other, marbles indeed, but what marbles ! 
Simpering children in frilled dresses ; young women with 
their nudity accentuated by means of bathing drawers ; 
vulgar-looking busts of vulgar-looking men ; coy creatures 
smirking at butterflies seated on their naked arms or 
bosoms, and other sculptured delights. But never a 
work that has a spark of the old Promethean fire, which 
elevates its student, or moves him — at any rate as art 
should move. 

Of painting and buildings is it not the same ? 
Where has the genius flown and will it ever return ? 
I know the fashion is to decry our modern English 
art, and doubtless much of it is poor. Yet so far as 
my small experience goes, that art has, at any rate in 
some instances, more truth and spirit than any other 
of the day which I have found abroad. 

I have said that I will not discourse upon the art 
treasures of Florence. Still I may be permitted to 
mention two, by no means of the best known, which 
perhaps impressed me most among them. Of these one 
is a certain life-sized Annunciation by Donatello, fashioned 
of a dark- coloured freestone, cut in high relief and set 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 17 



into a very gloomy wall of the church of Santa Croce. 
It was, I believe, one of the master's earlier works, but 
looking at it I wondered whether he ever fashioned any- 
thing more beautiful. The Virgin is of a somewhat modern 
type of face, with rippling hair parted in the middle ; 
indeed I can remember a lady who might have sat for a 
model of that statue. As for the exquisite grace of 
her pose and shape, or that of the angel who bends the 
knee to her, to be understood they must be seen. 
Description here is hopeless ; I can say only that in my 
case at any rate they affect the mind as does the sight of 
same perfect landscape, or of a lovely flower breaking 
into bloom. 

What imagination also is comprised in the Virgin's 
pose. She has risen from her seat and her left hand 
clasps the book she reads. Her robe has caught upon 
a corner of the chair so that her mantle is strained 
tight. What under ordinary conditions would be a 
woman's first instinctive thought ? Doubtless to free 
it with the hand that was disengaged. But no — the 
message has come to her — the Power has fallen upon 
her, and that hand is pressed upon the heart wherein 
It lies. There is much else that might be said of this 
true masterpiece, but let an artist say it, not one merely 
of art's most humble admirers. 

The second work that struck me pre-eminently, 
although in a fashion totally different, is in the church 
of Certosa di Val d'Ema. It is by Francesco da 
Sangallo, and represents in white marble the body of 
the Cardinal Leonardo Buonafede, who died in 1545, as 
laid out for burial. Not an attractive subject it may 
be thought, this corpse of an old, old man. Yet with 
what power and truth is it treated : those full, somewhat 
coarse features are instinct with the very dignity of death. 
There before us is the man as his mourners laid him 
upon the bier centuries ago — every line of his wrinkled 
face, every fold of the flesh that after serving him so 

B 



18 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



well has failed him now. It is a triumph of forceful 
portraiture. 

The old monastery where this statue lies, and with it 
others almost as perfect, is a strange and lovely place. 
Inhabited by a few ancient monks who, under the Italian 
law abolishing the religious establishments, are, I believe, 
not allowed to recruit their numbers; a vast pile of 
rambling buildings fortified for defence, it stands supreme 
upon a cypress-covered hill. Its interior with the halls, 
chapels, crypts, and columned galleries need not be de- 
scribed. Indeed, quaint as they are, there is something 
better here — the view from certain windows and cloisters. 

This prospect is quite unlike any that I have seen in 
other parts of the world. Perhaps some of the high 
uplands of Mexico, with their arid, aloe-clothed soil, go 
nearest to it in general character and colouring, though 
that is not so very near. The prevailing colour-note 
of Tuscany, in winter, is greyness. This tone it owes 
chiefly, though not altogether, to the sad-hued olives 
which clothe its slopes and plains, broken here and 
there by rows and clumps of tall and gracious cypresses, 
standing sometimes, and thus they are most beautiful, 
upon a mountain ridge clear-cut against the sky. Let 
the reader visit any good art- collection and study the 
backgrounds of old Florentine pictures. There he will 
find these same cypresses. So grey and hueless, though 
so strangely charming, is the scene indeed, that the eye 
falls almost with rapture upon the vivid patches fur- 
nished by a species of rosy-twigged sallow which grows 
in the damper bottoms. Considered from above these 
sallows look like no bush or tree ; they are as little 
golden clouds that have fallen from heaven to melt upon 
the earth. 

Other peculiarities of that wide stretch of plain and 
mountain-slope are its lifelessness and silence. Were this 
England, or even Africa, birds great and small, animals 
also, would be audible and moving. But here, nothing. 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 19 



Not a note, not a beating wing, not even the white scut 
of a rabbit. So far as small fowl are concerned the ex- 
planation is easy ; they form one of the favourite articles 
of Florentine food. In every eating-shop, thrust through 
with a skewer, may be seen their tiny bodies separated 
from each other by squares of toast or bacon. 

I remember that a man in front of the cathedral 
offered to sell me a bundle of dead birds which I 
examined. They included robins, thrushes, blackbirds, 
goldfinches, and jays, taken, most of them, with bird- 
lime. Needless to add of these birds the jays, which I 
should have imagined uneatable, were the only ones that 
ought to have been killed. What is the result ? In a 
long walk through wooded country in the neighbourhood 
of Fiesole, although I kept my eyes open, I saw but one 
small bird, which was so wild that it would not let me 
get near enough to distinguish its species. Just before 
that rare event I had met a sportsman with a double- 
barrelled gun and shortly afterwards I heard a shot. 
Probably this last little bird is now no more. No wonder 
that Browning was anxious to get back to England in 
April — 

" Oh ! to be in England now that April's here " — 

living as he did in a country where scarcely a songster is 
left to greet the spring. How thankful should we be for 
our English birds, which add so much to the innocent 
happiness of our lives— the sparrow always excepted, and 
even he is welcome in a town. In the garden of the old 
and rambling house where I stayed in Florence lived 
some of these sparrows, and two cherished pairs of black- 
birds, which I used to contemplate from my window. 
Also there were sundry stray cats, and sometimes I 
wonder if those birds will ever see the autumn. May 
St. Francis (he of Assisi) protect them. 

I think that it was on the day of our visit to Certosa, 
where by the way, as I have neglected to mention, 



20 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the monks make excellent Chartreuse, that I became 
the proud possessor of a bronze crucifix and two 
hanging lamp-holders, which I discovered in a small 
curiosity-shop. These articles, with a bell which I did 
not purchase, were part of the furniture of the ancient 
chapel of a private family which has become extinct — 
that of the Cardinal Luperelli-Pitti in Cortona. Thus 
they found their way into the market. They are, I 
imagine, sixteenth-century work, though here I may be 
mistaken, as I can judge only by such knowledge of 
Dutch brass as I possess. It is possible, indeed, that the 
raised medallions of the Father, the Virgin, St. John and 
St. Mary Magdalene, at the four extremities of the cross, 
may show a somewhat earlier date. 

My reason for mentioning these articles, however, is 
because of the great elegance of the shape and workman- 
ship of the lamp-holders, whereof unfortunately I can 
give no idea in words, and the quaintness of the little 
figures suggestive of embryonic angels to which are fixed 
the hanging chains. Why, I ask, cannot such antiques 
be taken as models for the church furniture of to-day in 
England ? Any churchwarden or clergyman will know 
how extraordinarily difficult it is to procure lamps of 
really handsome and pleasing design. 1 Yet it rarely 
seems to occur to makers to copy those which were 
fashioned in times when even the manufacturer of useful 
brass-work was not ashamed to be an artist. 

Unhappily it is not in the case of chmch-fittings 
only that such a state of affairs prevails, especially in 
this matter of lamps. A year or two back I remember 
searching the entire stock of a great London establish- 

1 In the church at Heacham in Norfolk may be seen a set of hanging 
lamps presented to it by Mr. Neville Kolfe, the British Consul at Naples. 
These beautiful pierced holders are reproduced from one that hangs in 
the sanctuary of St. Mark's Cathedral at Venice. Their design is well 
worthy of the attention of any who desire to follow Mr. Kolfe's excellent 
example, and provide an English church with lamps that are as service- 
able as they are satisfactory to the eye and taste. 



Brass Lamp-Holder from the Chapel of the Family 
luperelli-pitti in corona 
(The chains have been set further apart since purchase) 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 



21 



ment before I could procure hanging lamps that were 
even simple and, to my fancy, of a not unpleasing shape. 
When in Florence itself I looked through the contents 
of a shop where such articles were sold, with a like result. 
All were florid in execution and vulgar in design. 

It is the same everywhere in the case of brass-work. 
Thus some of my readers may have noticed the beautiful 
seventeenth-century chandeliers which still hang in certain 
of the churches of Holland — kerk-krone they are called 
— and have noticed too how pleasingly they attract the 
eye, making bright points whereby it can appreciate the 
dimensions of those great fanes. Yet when gas became 
common, in very many cases these kerk-krone were pulled 
out of the churches to be sold as old brass and replaced 
by cast gun-metal brackets of the most atrocious patterns. 
Yes, and this was done although the ancient chandeliers 
are capable of easy adaptation to the use of gas. As 
a consequence they are now becoming very rare. 

Why do not the Arts and Crafts add the education of 
the taste of the British lamp-maker to the list of their good 
works ? Hundreds of artists complain that they cannot 
make a living. Let them do as men of their profession 
did a few centuries ago, and direct their talents to the 
design and manufacture at a moderate price of really 
beautiful articles for common use. So shall their gene- 
ration rise up and call them blessed. Perhaps, however 
— I have heard as much suggested — the generation as 
a whole prefers things as they are. 

One day I accepted the kind invitation of a gentle- 
man who lives on the mountain about four hundred feet 
above Fiesole, the ancient Etruscan city that preceded 
Florence, to inspect his vineyard, where he manufactures 
wine for the English market. The view from this farm 
is very fine, including as it does Florence spread out like I 
a map far below and an enormous stretch of country 
dotted with villas, farmhouses, and even ancient castles 
that in past ages have been the scene of siege and sack. 



22 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



This expanse is divided into hundreds of vineyards and 
olive orchards, broken here and there on the slope of 
hills with patches of oak scrub which is used for firewood. 
My host's farm is approached up a steep and constant 
incline that winds through a large wood of cypress trees, 
sombre but graceful in appearance, although in most in- 
stances disfigured by the local habit of trimming off the 
boughs as high as possible. This is done under the im- 
pression, which I believe to be erroneous, that it improves 
the timber. At any rate it does not improve its beauty. 

The farmstead itself is very ancient, some parts of it 
dating back to the fourteenth century. Indeed everything 
here is ancient. It has a pretty little court or cortilc 
with graceful arches round about it, adorned in the centre 
with an old effigy of a lion in stone, which was dug up 
somewhere in the neighbourhood. In front of this court 
is a well nearly a hundred feet deep — probably Etruscans 
drew their water here. Looking downwards I could see 
the ripple on the face of the pool which shows where the 
spring flows that has fed it for so many centuries. The 
well has this peculiarity also — that it can be approached 
for the drawing of water at two distinct levels, the lower 
having an arched entrance of its own which opens on to 
a terrace twenty feet or more below. Another remarkable 
feature of the house is a very massive wooden roof covering 
the apartments now used as sitting-rooms. 

Few of these wine-farms seem to be large. My host's, 
I gathered, is of the common size, some twenty acres 
under vines and olives, excluding such portion as is still 
unreclaimed and as yet produces nothing but scrub and 
stray cypress trees. There is absolutely no live stock on 
the place beyond a horse and a cow for domestic use, 
such carting as may be necessary being done with hired 
ox- wains, picturesque in appearance, but slow and cumber- 
some in practice. 

As I saw it, this is the process of preparing land for 
vines. A suitable area having been chosen on the steep 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 23 



slope of a hill facing south-east, which seems to be the 
aspect preferred, the shale soil, mixed with what looked to 
me like light loam covered with a good spit of turf, is 
trenched to a depth of a little over three feet. First a 
foot or so of broken rock is laid in the bottom of the 
trench for drainage before it is filled up with the soil and 
turf. This is the most important requisite. More than 
twenty years ago at Pretoria in the Transvaal I remem- 
ber, by the way, making a little vineyard on a very 
similar soil and in a very similar fashion; only labour 
being scarce and inefficient, I did not trench nearly so 
thoroughly. 

Our host is now planting vines of a Burgundy char- 
acter, setting them as cuttings at a good distance from 
each other. These take from three to four years to come 
into full bearing. American vines are much sought after 
in this part of Tuscany because of their supposed quality 
of resistance to the attacks of phylloxera, which dread 
disease is the blackest cloud on the horizon of the Italian 
grape-grower. These, however, seem very difficult to 
obtain of good and true stock, owing apparently to the 
existence of Government regulations prohibiting the im- 
portation of foreign vines, trees, or flowers. 

Not satisfied with the ample drainage provided at 
the roots and by the natural slope of the land, stone 
channels are laid upon the surface to carry off flood- 
water. Vines, it has been proved, are very fastidious as 
to their supply of moisture, although in some seasons of 
drought they are much helped by irrigation where this 
is practicable. What they dislike more than anything, 
however, as indeed I have noticed in English glass- 
houses, is stagnant water at the roots. The other re- 
quisites to a successful cultivation of the grape in this 
part of Italy are that the soil should be dug annually 
between the rows, and artificial manures, such as nitrates 
and phosphates, applied in suitable quantity. 

In the older vineyards below this house many olive 



24 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



trees grow among the vines, but my host informs me that 
they are unremunerative. A great number of these trees 
were destroyed during November in the following curious 
fashion. First fell a heavy rain, which was succeeded 
instantly by a fierce frost that coated every bough with 
ice. The trees could not bear the weight, and in many 
instances snapped in two or lost their largest boughs, a 
mutilation which was often shared by the young firs. I 
noted this destruction on my walk up to the house, and 
ignorantly jumped to the conclusion that a tornado had 
visited the district. On this farm the olive trees which 
were slain thus are not to be replanted. 

The actual vintage, which of course answers to our 
harvest, occupies a few days only, nearly one hundred 
hands being employed upon this small acreage, so that 
the grapes may be got off when they are exactly ripe. 
Here it is that the wine-farmer must show judgment and 
even courage. The grapes ought not to be gathered 
before they are ripe. But if wet weather chances to 
come on then so that they cannot be handled, they 
crack and great damage is done. Therefore the tempta- 
tion to begin the vintage too soon is considerable. 

Once plucked the grapes are brought up to the house 
in hired ox-waggons, there to go through the various 
processes of pressing. When this is completed the wine 
is stored for a while in huge vats holding I forget how 
many hundred gallons, but I think about a thousand. 
There it remains for a certain period. Then it is drawn 
off into other casks and kept for three years or so, after 
which the produce of this particular vineyard goes to the 
English market. My host informed me that it is quite 
a mistake to suppose that the red Italian Chianti will 
not travel and keep without undue alcoholic fortification. 
The new wine has this weakness, not so the old. That 
there are limits to its keeping qualities I can, however, 
testify. Long ago I remember my father producing from 
his cellar some flasks of Italian wine, which he had 



A TUSCAN WINE-FARM 



imported when on his wedding tour to Borne some forty 
years before. I never tasted better vinegar. 

To return, my host finds that he can make a fair 
profit on his Chianti by charging eighteen shillings a 
dozen for it delivered in London. At least this was so, 
but since Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has increased the 
duty on light drinking wines there is a different tale 
to tell. As regards the quality and character of the 
wine, although it cannot compete with high-class French 
clarets, it is very sound and agreeable to the palate. 
Above all, it is pure grape-juice and nothing else. 

On the day of my visit some men, about four or five, 
were employed in the wine-cave washing the flasks with 
successive rinsings of soda, acid, and water hot and 
cold. This careful cleansing was preparatory to the 
wine being bottled for shipment, really bottled with 
corks, not with oil poured into the neck to exclude 
the air, and a piece of pink paper, according to the local 
custom. These flasks or Jiaschi, which are very pretty, 
and half covered with reed netting, cost about a penny 
halfpenny apiece, but I noticed that a good percentage of 
them break in the washing. Hence the term " fiasco " 
used in our sense ; or, to be quite accurate, it is derived 
from the breaking of a full wine-flask when lifted by 
the neck. 

A supplementary product of the farm is olive oil, that 
is ground out by the help of an ox which walks round 
and round and drives a simple crushing-mill. The raw 
resulting oil is divided into three grades or qualities, of 
which the second is best for lamps, and the third mixed 
with water is used by the poor. This season the olive 
harvest was a very bad one, consequently oil is dear. 

As regards the profit of such vineyards, my host 
seemed to be of opinion that a man of energy and in- 
telligence, taking one year with another, in the absence 
of phylloxera, can make about ten per cent, upon the 
capital invested. Other experienced vine-growers, how- 



26 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



ever, told nie that they consider this estimate too high. 
Then comes the question of the capital itself. Even in 
the case of a vineyard of moderate size I gather that 
the amount required is considerable. The farmer may 
begin on less, but if he wishes to earn a living out of 
his labour, it seems that he ought to be able to com- 
mand about £5000. 

The item of labour in the neighbourhood of Florence 
is not heavy, the men, who are docile and willing, being 
paid only about eight shillings a week. They decline, 
however, to work in wet weather, nor are they very 
strong, living as they do upon poor and insufficient food, 
and at times in their fireless hovels suffering severely 
from the cold. 

The result of my investigations into the prospects of 
the Tuscan wine industry is that, on the whole, I should 
not recommend it to young men seeking new lands in 
which to farm. The capital required seems too con- 
siderable and the margin of profit too small. More- 
over there is always the possibility of phylloxera to be 
reckoned with. Still, for those to whom considerations of 
health or other private reasons may make residence 
in a sunny climate under a foreign flag desirable, who 
at the same time do not wish or cannot afford to lead an 
idle life, the occupation would be excellent. To live be- 
neath those sheltering hills, to feast the eyes upon that 
glorious view, to watch the vines put forth their tender 
leaves, to see the tiny clusters form and in autumn to 
gather the rich harvest all in the glow of a glorious 
sun — what more could be asked by the man of quiet, 
contemplative mind, who yet loves not to be idle ? Or, 
at the least, what more is he likely to get in this hard 
world ? 



CHAPTER III 



FIESOLE AND FLORENCE 

One bitter night at moonrise I stood near to the 
highest point of the mountain of Fiesole and looked 
down upon the wide valley in whose lap lies Florence, far 
down across lines of solemn cypresses and grey groves of 
olives to the vast plain beneath. Cold and dead- coloured 
appeared old Fiesole, now that the sun had left it ; cold, 
yet lovely, with a death-like loveliness, the vague and 
stretching landscape. And Florence herself, that great 
city, how small she seemed at this distance of some few 
miles ! Her towering palaces of huge stones were but as 
huts, the vast dome of her cathedral as that of a village 
church. The landscape dominates and dwarfs her. The 
sweeping circle of black hills ; that mighty mirror of the 
Arno flashing in the last ray of sunset — what is she 
compared to these ? The ancient Etruscan studying that 
view from this very standpoint, can have felt no need of 
Florence to complete the scene, and were she rased now 
to the earth as in the middle days one of her rulers 
would have rased her, she would scarce be missed — 
from here. In fact it is the old story. These hills and 
plains have borne the yoke of man almost from the 
beginning, and yet how faint its scar ! The scratches 
which we make on Nature's face are very shallow and soon 
heal. That there is nothing permanent about man and 
his labours, is a truism which the consideration of such 
a scene as this brings home. Those thousand lamps that 
are now beginning to shine in the streets and windows of 
Florence far below, will only bum — till at dawn the light 
of lights arises. 

127 



28 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



In the winter season, at the time of approaching 
night, there is something very mysterious and melancholy 
about this Tuscan landscape. It looks so coldly solemn, 
so lifeless, while one by one the stars spring out in the 
blue depths above. 

One meets a great many funerals in Florence, all of 
them after nightfall. Perhaps this may be accounted for 
by the influenza prevailing at the time of my stay, but 
as a people the Florentines seem to me to have a strange 
fancy for parading their sick and dead in public. At the 
least I have not noticed so many of these melancholy 
sights in other cities. Very common is it, as the visitor 
walks down some narrow street, to hear a measured tread 
behind, and look round to see the brethren of the Miseri- 
cordia at their work of mercy. These are they who, 
drawn from every rank of society, for more than five 
centuries have laid out the dead, or carried the sick of 
Florence to where they might be succoured. Their very 
appearance indeed is ominous of death and sorrow ; 
when they come upon the sight thus swiftly it even 
shocks. 

Their robes are black from head to foot, covering 
the wearer, all but his hands and feet, so that nothing 
of him can be seen save perhaps his eyes as they glitter 
through the little openings in the hood. Six of them go 
together, three in front and three behind, and between 
them is the stretcher, also arched over with black cloth. 
These stretchers are apt to excite a somewhat morbid 
curiosity in the mind of the passer-by. Watching many 
of them I learned at last to know, by the way the crossed 
straps pressed upon the shoulders of the bearers, and 
the fashion in which these stepped and set their feet 
upon the ground, whether or no they were empty or 
laden ; also by any little movements of the cover, or the 
lack of them, whether the occupant, if there should be 
one, was alive or dead. 

From time to time the bell of the church sounds 



FIESOLE AND FLORENCE 29 



the " misericordia," twice for an accident, thrice for a 
death. Thereon the brethren who are on duty, rise up 
at once wherever they may be, at dinner, at mass, in the 
theatre, or at their business, don their robes and go forth, 
not to come back until their task, whatever it proves, is 
done. As the first pair of them set their returning feet 
upon the threshold of the church they turn and give to 
those who follow, the ancient greeting, " May God reward 
you ! " to receive back the salutation, " And you also ! " 

It is a worthy society and their work is holy, though 
perhaps the ambulances of a London hospital would do 
it better. Also here is no mere picturesque survival. 
One day while I stood for a few minutes near the Campanile 
I saw three parties of them come up to the door of the 
commonplace, green-shuttered house which is their 
habitation. Each company carried a stretcher, though 
whether these were empty or brought bodies thither to 
be coffined, I could not tell. 

Who are the greatest men in the true sense that 
have lived since the day of our Lord ? The ques- 
tion is difficult if not impossible to answer. Yet three 
names leap to my mind, all of them oddly enough con- 
nected with religion : Martin Luther, William the Silent, 
Savonarola. If these stars do not shine most bright among 
that heavenly host, I think that there are none more 
luminous, none at least that burn with a purer fire, none 
with one more immortal. 

Of the three Savonarola has always fascinated me the 
most, perhaps because a man instinctively gives reverence 
to an abnegation and a nobility from which he feels that 
his own weakness would have locked him. We worship 
the crown of thorns we dare not wear. Savonarola was no 
pale-blooded monk, no mere shadow of a man, but one to 
whose ears the world had a siren voice. He could love 
and he could suffer, and finally take up his cross not 
because he had loved and suffered, not that its grinding 
weight might cause him to forget his worldly smarts, but 



30 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



for the high reason that the days were evil and he was 
called to deny himself and cure them. 

Surely this man was almost a Christ without Christ's 
consolations and secret strength. He only saw through 
a glass darkly, he only knew in part. The Spirit spoke 
within him, but its accents were broken, imperfect and 
contradictory ; he could not hear with any clearness ; often 
he could not understand what he heard. At times he 
believed his own prophecies to be the very voice of God. 
At times he seems to have doubted whether they were 
not merely vapours arising from his harrowed soul, the 
fantastic smoke of his own fervid imagination fashioned 
to angel shapes to lead him through a gateway of the 
presumptuous sin. See him when the trial by fire brings 
him face to face with a more furious trial — that of his 
own faith. He had interpreted the promises literally ; 
he taught that faith could move mount am s. But had 
he not meant spiritual mountains ? Did he really believe 
that the Powers of Heaven would alter the law of nature 
and keep the fire from peeling the skin off the flesh 
and burning the hair and the garments of Fra Domenico ? 
He wavered, he hung between two opinions. Then faith 
conquered. The ordeal went on so far as it was allowed 
to go, till rain fell indeed and put out the untrodden fire, 
and the furious populace, baulked of a blood-feast, turn- 
ing upon their prophet tortured and slew him by rope 
and flame. 

The home of this man stands in Florence much as it 
was in his own day. There is the church of San Marco, 
an uninteresting building with the pulpit from which he 
used to preach, until his audiences grew so great that 
even the vast Duomo could not hold them. One day 
I attended this Duomo — that is, the cathedral — in order 
to witness a procession of the White Brethren. Except 
for the colour of their garment this order is clothed like 
the Brethren of the Misericordia, and indeed, as I believe, 
performs similar merciful offices outside the gates of 



FIESOLE AND FLORENCE 



31 



Florence. The occasion was a great festival, and these 
White Brethren, preceded by priests and banners, carry- 
ing, each of them, a lighted taper, wound about the 
building, to gather at last in masses before the altar. 
This, however, at any rate to my eye, was not the real 
sight. That was to see the thousands upon thousands 
of spectators which crowded, not the dome only, but 
the whole cathedral to its uttermost recesses, so densely 
indeed that it was difficult to move. " Thus," thought 
I to myself, " must this Duomo have appeared when its 
walls rang to the echoes of the voice of Savonarola as 
he rolled out his threats and warnings upon a sinful 
generation, as he told of the sword of God about to fall 
— Gladius Domini siqora terram cito et velociter." 

At first, however, it was in this church of San Marco 
that he preached, and surely the lessons of his life and 
death will echo from its walls down all the stream of 
Time. 

Yet the convent moves one more. Here are the 
cloisters planted with roses where Savonarola used to 
walk ; the chapter-house with its life-sized and dreadful 
crucifixes ; the vaulted refectories where he ate his 
simple food among his brethren. Upstairs too is the 
library with its double row of supporting arches, quite 
plain and yet so beautiful, beneath whose centre the 
prophet stood to administer the Sacrament to his com- 
pany while without, the furious mob of Florentine wolves 
clawed down the doors, snarling for his blood. 

The day that we visited the place was very cold 
though bright, and for this reason, or some other, it 
was almost unoccupied. As I discovered afterwards in 
Palestine, it is thus that one should study such abodes. 
Foolish as it may be to think it, a crowd disturbs their 
associations and memories : sometimes even it seems 
to make them vulgar. So it happened that we went 
round San Marco alone, untroubled by guides or tourists. 

The details of the convent are all known, and volumes 



32 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



have been written about the paintings of Fra Angelico, 
many of which are so beautiful and yet so simple, that 
they might well be visions of heaven and its inhabitants 
seen by some spiritual child. On the walls of many of 
the cells the patient Brother painted one of them, and 
had I been destined to dwell there I should have blessed 
his name. When a man has nothing else to look at save 
white walls, a picture in blue and red and gold by Fra 
Angelico would fill the mind with rapture. Only some- 
times I should have wished to move on a little and 
study the next design. 

Of all these narrow, white-washed apartments, how- 
ever, that once were the home of passionate and earnest 
men, wrestling their way to heaven by a thorny, doubtful 
path, long-forgotten dust now, every one of them, those 
that most fix the mind and fascinate the imagination 
were the abode of Savonarola. From the cloisters with- 
out the visitor sees two little windows, each a few feet 
square. At the end of a long passage on the upper 
floor are the apartments, not larger than an ordinary 
dressing-room, to which those windows with then massive 
hanging shutters give light, a place to sleep and a place 
to sit. Here the pious visitor who is of that mind, 
through the mere fact of visiting them obtains — or 
obtained by the decree of Pope Leo X., who flourished 
at the beginning of the sixteenth century — "an in- 
dulgence of ten years," whatever that may mean. The 
inner cell contains a copy of an ancient picture of the 
hanging and burning of its greatest occupant upon the 
piazza. It is very much a work of fancy, representing 
in a stiff, conventional manner the three poor corpses 
hanging each to its cross while the fire curls around 
them, and little knots of spectators strolling about un- 
concernedly over the expanse of the great square. Very 
different, I imagine, was the real scene when the place 
was packed with thousands of excited onlookers. There 
they watched and shouted while the mighty martyr 



FIESOLE AND FLORENCE 33 



whose blood was indeed a seed of righteousness, with his 
disciples was stripped of his robes by the brutal Domini- 
cans, traitors to their most famous brother, and with due 
pomp and form publicly degraded by the bishop of 
Vasona. 

" I separate thee from the Church militant and 
triumphant," cried the bishop, exulting over his fallen 
foe. 

" Not from the Church triumphant, that is beyond 
thy power," through all the ages rings the answer of 
the dying prophet. 

Then the yells of the mob, the last dread scene of 
death prolonged to its uttermost, the crackling of the 
eager pyre, the flames blown out straight like a banner 
by a sudden gust of roaring wind, the shouts of " A 
miracle ! a miracle ! " and as the wind passes and the 
fire gets to its destroying work again, the sound of 
the sobbing of the Piagnoni and the sight of their tears 
which fall like dew. 

Even this copied painting is old now, so old that 
the worms are busy, as the tiny holes and little piles 
of white dust upon the frame testify. I pointed this out 
to the custodian, and suggested that paraffin skilfully 
applied might prolong the life of the panel, but he only 
shrugged his shoulders. Doubtless he thought that it 
would last his time — after that others could see to it. 

The outer place is that where Savonarola sat and 
worked for years. Here he wrote his notes for the 
sermons which shook the world, his commentaries upon 
portions of the Bible in that tiny illegible handwrit- 
ing, and his treatise against the trial by fire. Here 
hangs the robe in which he went to torture and execu- 
tion, that same robe whereof the Dominican stripped 
him. Here too are kept his hair-shirt, the rosary which 
his long nervous fingers must so often have counted 
as he bent over it in prayer, and his Bibles. The curious 
chair in which he was wont to sit is here also, with 

c 



34 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



an exact copy of his deal desk — the original has 
crumbled away — and beneath it a platform of some more 
enduring wood worn by the shuffling of his feet. 

There on the wall is his portrait, the strong, large- 
nosed, thick-lipped face framed in a black hood, so ugly 
and yet so fascinating. One feels that the owner of 
this face might easily have become a sensuous brute, 
and yet by the grace that was given him he became 
one of the greatest of saints. The flesh was trodden 
down, the spirit triumphed. Yes, and in this spot it 
seems to live on. Something of the atmosphere which 
environed Savonarola, something of the essence that 
inhabited him, appears to occupy the place which 
he himself inhabited. His breath is about those 
ancient walls, his prayers, so strangely answered, yet 
echo round them. To some at least it is not hard 
to imagine that his ghost or its reflection still dwells 
there. It is a chamber to leave with a bowed head and 
a humble heart. 

The palace of the Signoria is surmounted by a 
famous and beautiful tower of wondrous architecture 
that soars I forget how many hundred feet into the air. 
Quite near to the top of this tower the visitor, who 
has the breath to climb it, is shown a tiny prison with a 
stone seat and a single slit to furnish it with light and 
air, through which, looking down, he may see the church 
of Santa Croce. Here for some forty days Savonarola 
was incarcerated, and hence from time to time he was 
led down to the torture which his frail flesh could not 
bear. Here too, whenever his agonies were abated, 
he wrote some of his last commentaries. What a 
picture this monk must have presented as he dragged 
his crushed and twisted limbs from the torment-place of 
the Bargello, up those countless stairs to lay his poor 
head down upon the stone while the great bell of 
Florence boomed out the hours of the night above 
him. 



FIESOLE AND FLORENCE 35 



Below in this same palace is that gorgeous apart- 
ment known as the Hall of the Five Hundred. When 
some years before Savonarola urged its enlargement to 
a size which would allow it to contain two thousand 
citizens, his spirit of prophecy did not tell him that here 
he would be tried and condemned, that here also he 
would pass some of the latest and most holy hours of his 
life. In this great chamber for the last time, or rather 
the last before the last, the master and his two disciples, 
Domenico and Sylvestro, met after their forty days of 
torment, each of them having been assured that the 
others had recanted and betrayed them. Here then 
Savonarola prayed with them, counselling them to submit 
to doom meekly but bravely; here he blest and bade 
them farewell. What a subject for the hand of an 
artist ! But he should be a great artist. 

One day I paid a visit to the kind and fortunate 
possessor of a certain most ancient and beautiful villa on 
the lower slope of the Fiesole mountain. It is a vast 
building with great cool rooms, on the walls of one of 
which is frescoed the portrait of some one's pet dog that 
died hundreds of years ago, and beneath it a touching 
epitaph. The building is old indeed, for its history can 
be traced since the year nine hundred and odd, and the 
family from whom the present owners bought it, held 
the property for over five centuries. In the garden, also, 
is the very well used by Boccaccio as the gathering-place 
where his gay party of gallants and their ladies, flying 
from the pest in Florence, wiled away the heat of a 
summer day by telling to each other stories. Were 
those Arcadian tales written and published in this year 
of grace almost might they earn their author six weeks 
in gaol and the opportunity of posing as a martyr to the 
zeal of Puritans. As it is they are classics; therefore, 
like the masterpieces of Queen Margaret of Navarre and 
of Rabelais, they may circulate unafraid. 

Perhaps the most beautiful thing, however, about 



36 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



this beautiful house is the prospect which it commands, for 
from its verandahs in clear weather can be seen a stretch 
of no less than thirty leagues of hill, plain, and valley. On 
the whole, I think that my most pleasing recollection of 
Florence and its neighbourhood is this white and ancient 
villa and the marvellous landscape which lies beneath 
and around it for miles on miles. 



CHAPTER IV 



POMPEII 

It is the fashion of Englishmen to decry their own customs 
and institutions. How common it is, for instance, to 
hear our system of railway travelling compared unfavour- 
ably with that of other countries; and yet in what 
foreign land does the traveller meet with half the com- 
fort, assistance, and civility that he finds at home ? Take 
the question of luggage. Theoretically the fashion of 
booking may be perfect ; in practice, at any rate in Italy, 
it means that you lose your portmanteaus. Under our 
despised habit of labelling, on the other hand, during 
many years of travel I have never as yet lost a single 
article. Again, consider the much -vaunted warming 
of trains. All I can say is that for my part far, far 
rather would I travel in the coldest compartment than 
in the heated infernos with every air-hole hermeti- 
cally sealed, that are fashionable in the continental 
corridor-carriages. Then the porters. Is there a more 
civil being than the average English porter, and one 
more contented with a very humble fee ? Compare him 
with the gentleman of his profession across the Channel. 
Sometimes, moreover, these simply are not, the passenger 
must carry his own things or leave them behind; and 
seldom is one met with who does not grumble at his fee 
however ample. 

As a specimen journey our own from Florence 
to Rome is one to be remembered. First, as usual, we 
were penned up like sheep. Then by dint of bribery, 
as we were informed that the train would be full, 

37 



38 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



my nephew was smuggled on to the platform to secure 
two seats. Having got their money those who accom- 
panied him did not return. In the end indeed, no 
porter being available, a lady who had come to see me 
off and I were personally obliged to drag a considerable 
number of heavy articles for a distance of over a hundred 
yards just as the express was about to start. It was 
crowded, the habit upon most foreign railways being to 
run as few trains and furnish them with as few carriages 
as possible. In this one there was not a seat to spare, 
but the overcrowding was nothing in the scale of dis- 
comfort compared to the heat, which I should imagine 
cannot have registered much less than ninety degrees. 
We ventured to open a window in the corridor, whereon 
instantly a fellow-traveller sprang up, rushed and shut it 
with a slam. Yet these are the people whose houses 
throughout their bitter winter are innocent of fires. I 
can only conclude that here we discover a tribute to 
the frugal mind. The warmth in the railway carriages 
costs nothing, it is included in the fare. Therefore they 
absorb as much of it as possible. 

The end of this particular journey was as wretched 
as the beginning. Half-way to Rome, in conformity 
with my common experience, a train went off the line 
in front of us, and so at some wayside place we were de- 
layed for hours, the English among us marching up and 
down the platform in the biting cold to escape the air- 
less heat within. Finally, instead of the scheduled time 
of eleven at night, we arrived in Rome at something past 
three in the morning — without on this occasion, I am 
proud to say, losing any of our luggage. 

Rome ! What is the chance visitor who sees it for 
the first time to say of the Imperial City? Silence is 
best. What struck you most there ? people are fond of 
asking. Well, for my part, everything struck me, not 
forgetting the fearful weather which it was our fortune 
to encounter. During the first day that I was in Rome, 



POMPEII 



39 



it rained in torrents, snowed and thundered, while the 
atmosphere was that of an ice-house. No wonder that 
there were I forget how many tens of thousands of 
people down with the influenza, a company to which 
presently I added one more humble unit. 

But what struck me most ? Well, one or two little 
things, for in the words of Herodotus, of the great ones 
out of the scantiness of my experience I do not consider 
it "lawful to speak." In the Colosseum, opposite to 
the place where the Caesars sat on days of festival 
and slaughter, and if I remember right, in the neigh- 
bourhood of that occupied by the Vestals, is an avenue, 
or entrance, which was called, I think, the Triumphant 
Way. By it, we were told, the gladiators marched in 
before they crossed the arena to give their famous 
salutation to the emperor, that same salutation which, 
unconsciously perhaps, day by day from the beginning 
to the end of Time the whole creation renders to its 
Creator, " Those about to die, salute thee ! " Their 
" triumphant " feet must have trod upon a long-vanished 
wooden flooring. Beneath this floor ran a dark pas- 
sage — one can see it to-day — along which, within some 
few minutes of time, the bodies of many of them were 
dragged by iron hooks fixed in their flesh to certain 
vaults, where they lay till it was convenient to be rid 
of them. 

That struck me — the contrast between the living 
men, splendid lusty animals, the muscles swelling on 
their limbs, the fire of fight in their keen eyes, the 
harness clanking as they walked, and the limp, gashed, 
senseless corpses which presently the slaves dragged 
thence to the last oblivion. Between the one and the 
other was but the thickness of a single plank. One 
wonders if they understood, if they foresaw. Perhaps, 
probably not, for if so they would have been unmanned, 
their steel nerves must have turned to water, they 
would not have given satisfaction to their patrons. No, 



40 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



as it is with us to-day, doubtless each of them hoped and 
believed that he would be the victor. That he would 
stand over the conquered enemy of the combat, who per- 
haps for years had been his own companion, watching, 
while eighty thousand voices roared their plaudits, for 
the movement of the Vestals' thumbs. Watching — for 
this hour — from above, not from below. 

Then the catacombs. Who that has imagination and 
a heart can fail to be moved by these ? The smell of 
that hot damp air clings long about the nostrils; I do 
not think that I shall ever be quite free of it. Those 
narrow, tortuous passages, whole furlongs of them, and 
on either side rising tier above tier, the loculi containing 
each a body, or what is left of it, of some early professor 
of our faith shut in behind three or four rough tiles. 
On some there is a symbol, on some an epitaph daubed 
in various-coloured paint, on some a name. I noted one 
particularly — Flora. Who was the girl Flora, I wonder, 
and what part did she play in that huge and blessed 
tragedy, what humble, quite forgotten part ? What a 
life also must these poor innocents have led who crowded 
into those darksome burrows, to worship while they lived 
and to sleep when life had left them, often enough by 
the fangs of a wild beast, the sword of the gladiator, or 
the torment of the tarred skin and the slowly burning 
fire. Truly these were faithful unto death, and as we 
are taught and hope their reward is not lacking. Think 
of the scene in the catacombs of San Sebastian. It was, 
I believe, during the persecution of Diocletian that a 
vast mob of them were shut up here, men, women, and 
little children, to starve in the sweltering heat. They 
still show the staircase where at length the legionaries 
came down. The rest can be guessed. " Thy slaughtered 
saints, Lord ! " 

A tile of one of these loculi was loose. I moved it 
surreptitiously, and thrusting my taper to the hollow, 
looked in. There was the Christian as he had been 



POMPEII 



41 



entombed, or rather his bones, sunk in a soft grey dust, 
the skull turned upon one side as a living person lays 
his head upon a pillow. Set with cement, as is very 
common, so that every passer-by could see, was a little 
glass vessel stained at the bottom with red pigment. 
This, said our guide, showed that it must be the grave 
of a martyr — the pigment was his blood. Traditions 
cling long but this is not so, it is but the sediment of 
the sacramental wine partaken of at the funeral. Yet 
martyrs are enough and to spare in these places. God 
alone knows to-day which of them died by the common 
sword death lifts against our race, which by the monstrous, 
fratricidal hand of man. Also, it no longer matters now 
that the slayers and the slain are at one, and judgment 
alone is left. 

I will mention one thing more out of the multitudes 
that I studied and one only, and then farewell to Rome. 
In the sculpture galleries of the Vatican is a beautiful 
effigy of a woman seated in a kind of low nursing chair 
and suckling an infant at her breast. We were told 
that the model for this statue was Agrippina personi- 
fying motherhood, and the innocent-eyed baby at her 
breast became known to the world as Nero, the matricide. 
Even to-day, after all these centuries, what a hell's jest is 
this piece of carven stone. 

At Naples the evil weather still pursued us. When 
we woke up on the morning after our arrival, the rain 
was falling in a steady torrent and thus it fell till night. 
Also the hotel was bitterly cold, and colder still was the 
Museum where we spent the day wrapped about with many 
cloaks. Yet it was a happy day although I coughed and 
shivered through its dark hours, for never before, as I 
think, have I seen so many beautiful things in one place. 

Truly, since in any case their inhabitants would be 
long dead by now, we should be grateful to Vesuvius 
which buried up Herculaneum and Pompeii with all 
their wonderful treasures of art. The dwellers in those 



42 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



cities were in many ways uncivilised enough. For in- 
stance the system of house-drainage, as I myself observed 
at Pompeii, was of a most primitive and poisonous nature, 
consisting apparently of a cesspool under the floor of the 
sitting-room. Again their monstrous and open licen- 
tiousness, of which the walls and buildings bear such 
unmistakable evidence, their gladiatorial shows and 
other of their customs, are scarcely what we should 
associate with civilisation as it is understood by us. In 
this connection, however, it must be remembered that 
behind the very thinnest veil of decent seeming, in 
almost every one of these respects Naples is as bad 
to-day as was Pompeii in the year of our Lord 79. 

Yet what artists were these Pompeians. All the 
talent of the world in our generation could not produce 
such statues and bronzes as have been found beneath the 
lava of Herculaneum and the ashes of Pompeii. There- 
fore it would seem that high civilisation does not favour 
the production of the finest art. On the other hand, 
neither does savagery. Nor can its appearances upon the 
earth as in the best Greek period, the very early Egyp- 
tian period, the period under discussion and that of the 
Renaissance, be accounted for as in the instance of the 
uprising of great writers such as Homer, Shakespeare, 
and others, in the occasional touching of the high-water 
mark of human intellect by a wave of individual genius. 
For at such epochs genius seems to have been a common 
gift. It fell like a sudden rain upon the heads of all. 
Then like the rain it ceased, to be followed by a long 
period of ineffective undewed sterility. The problem is 
too high for me, I abandon it. 

Naples, in a domestic sense, is pre-eminently remark- 
able for two things, its beggars, and its method of driving 
horses by means of a band across the nose in place of 
the common bit. I have never elsewhere seen this habit 
of harnessing. As for the beggars, so far as the traveller 
is concerned, they include practically the entire popula- 



POMPEII 



43 



tion. Against him every man uplifts his hand, or rather 
he stretches it out. The right carriage fare for a course, 
that is, from any one point to another in the town, is 
75 centimes; yet we saw ten francs extracted from a 
wretched American who still was followed with complaints 
and voluble abuse. One morning I sat at breakfast be- 
hind a massive window of plate glass which did not open. 
Nor was there any access to the street beyond under 
quite a moderate walk. Yet during the whole of that 
meal a sturdy youth stood without and begged of me. 
He knew that even if I was so minded I could not com- 
municate to him the desired coin, because between us 
there was a great pane fixed, in short that his was but 
labour wasted. And yet he begged, his nature prompting 
to the act. There sat an Englishman, and he must 
practise his trade if only in empty, unsatisfying panto- 
mime. In Naples every one expects a fee, generally for 
doing nothing, and no one is satisfied with it when 
received. Perhaps the cabmen, some of whom are black- 
mailers and scoundrels of peculiar villainy, take the palm 
for impudent extortion. Or should it be given to the 
boatmen ? Of them I anticipate to tell a story. 

When we reached Naples on our return from Syria 
my nephew went ashore to see a tradesman about some 
statuettes which we had purchased on our first visit, that 
did not appear to have reached their destinations. This 
he did against my advice, for the vessel was only staying 
two hours and the man lived near the Museum. The two 
hours passed, the last tug came off, eight o'clock was strik- 
ing. One officer after another asked me if my nephew was 
on board. I said that I could not see or hear him, and at 
last the captain announced firmly but regretfully that he 
had business at Marseilles and must be going. I shrugged 
my shoulders but inwardty I was anxious, as Naples is 
not a place for a young man to be left stranded without 
money, of which I knew he had little in his pocket. 
Also he wore my only ulster and I had lent him an 



44 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



umbrella ! The time came to hoist the gangway and I 
gave him up. Just then through the gloom at a little 
distance from the ship I caught sight of nfy ulster 
struggling violently, and of my umbrella waving in the 
air. Now followed an indescribable hubbub. The figure 
of the lost one, with a Neapolitan hanging on to his leg, 
struggled from one boat into another boat whence, with 
a well- planted kick, he neatly floored the Neapolitan and, 
breathless but triumphant, reached the companion and 
the deck. 

His tale was moving. It appears that he had been 
detained at the art- dealer's shop, and that the cabman 
who drove him to the quay, either by accident or 
very possibly on purpose, for one can never be quite 
certain of the designs of these men, took him a long way 
round. By the time he reached the embarking-place 
and had finished the usual altercation over his fare, the 
tug had gone, leaving him with something under fifteen 
minutes to reach the Oroya, which lay a mile or more 
away. Somehow, after being nearly torn to pieces, he 
made a bargain and got a boat, only to discover that his 
oarsmen either could not, or would not row at a speed 
needful in the situation. He coached them in the best 
Cambridge style, and when that proved ineffective, threat- 
ened by expressive pantomime to cast the elder of the 
two men into the deep, for the bellowing of the siren 
and the ringing of the bell on board the distant Oroya 
were sounds full of meaning to his ears. 

Thus encouraged the rowers put on the pace and 
arrived at length within fifty yards of the steamer, whose 
donkey engines were now beginning to clank upon the 
anchor chains. But there they stopped and opened 
negotiations for blackmail. Whether he would have 
ever got on board the ship, or now be at the bottom of 
Naples Bay, or the hero of some other unpleasant pre- 
dicament, had not an accident chanced, I know not. 
The accident was that while the altercation and mutual 



POMPEII 



45 



threats proceeded the boat drifted against another boat, 
into which, with commendable agility, he sprang, as I 
have described, the Italian hanging to his leg. Thence 
he gained the tug and from it the steamer. 

The officers of the ship told me that these incidents 
are common at Naples. There it is quite customary for 
boatmen to bring off wretched passengers just before 
their vessel sails, and refuse to put them on board until 
they receive some exorbitant ransom. In Cyprus the 
traveller has no need of any defensive weapon ; in most 
parts of Palestine he is not likely to regret its absence ; 
but in Naples, for my part, I should in future always 
carry a pistol to show if necessary. 

How blessed is the sun after long periods of cold and 
wet, especially in those lands where one expects sun and 
artificial heat is not employed. The night before we 
visited Pompeii, for instance, was not a happy one for 
me. I was actually frozen out of the hotel smoking- 
room with its glass roof and a toy stove which did 
not burn. By way of consolation I manufactured myself 
some hot whisky and water with the help of a dreadful 
Etna that would not blow out, boiled over and took 
the varnish off the table (damage five francs at least, if 
it was discovered). Then I crept to bed and to such 
sleep as an incessant influenza cough would allow. It 
was not much, but towards morning I began to enjoy 
nightmares. One I remember particularly; it was to 
demonstrate on paper one hundred different methods of 
folding an india-rubber bath in five seconds of time, and 
fifty different methods of emptying the same without 
spilling a drop, under pain of being thrown living from 
the top of the Bargello tower in Florence. Another 
pleasing dream was that I was actually very ill in a 
dreadful hotel with no one to attend upon me except 
Italian waiters, who always demanded five francs before 
they would give you anything to drink, or ten if you 
were particularly thirsty. At length I woke up stiff and 



46 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



aching, and there, streaming through the window, was the 
sun, at last — the bright Italian sun of many a romance. 
I could have worshipped it. 

To what the books on the subject, and their name is 
legion, say about Pompeii I shall attempt to add no- 
thing. For many years I desired to see this place, and 
when I saw it, it did not disappoint me. It is wonderful. 
The houses as they were, only without their roofs — very 
small houses for the most part. The narrow streets 
down which in times of storm the water ran, with the 
raised stepping-stones across them. The wear of the 
chariot wheels upon the paving, of the children's feet 
at the doors of school-houses, of the merchants' feet at 
the entrances of shops and places of business, of the 
priests' feet upon the thresholds of temples. The scrib- 
blings of gladiators and even of Christian slaves upon the 
walls. The obscene pictures and places. The fountains 
in the middle of the way with holes hollowed in their 
solid stone by the pressure of the hands of those who for 
six or seven centuries had leant down to refresh them- 
selves with their waters. The casts enclosing the actual 
skeletons of some of the poor creatures who were over- 
taken in the last catastrophe. The garden- courts still 
adorned with statues. All these and a hundred other 
things were wonderful. 

But how should a man see them ? From place to place 
he walks at the heels of an attentive guide who is full of 
information till he grows bewildered. Here are temples, 
here are baths, here a theatre, a forum, a wall, a circus, 
a private house with the statues still standing about the 
court, an abode not to be described, a baker's, a silver- 
smith's, an artist's shop, what not ? All the wreckage 
of a city, none of the finest or most large, it is true, 
suddenly obliterated in the midst of its active life, 
a clock that has stopped, the case decayed but the 
works laid bare, sui generis — alone in the relics of 
the universe. It is overwhelming, to study it in detail 



POMPEII 



47 



would take weeks, and even then who would be very 
much the wiser ? 

No, I think it is best to slip away alone as I did, and 
seated upon some stone or wall in the soft shine of the 
sunlight, to let the general scene and the unique atmos- 
phere that surrounds it, sink into the imagination. Then 
where no tourist disturbs, where no cicerone explains, 
the mind may strive to re-create. Its ears may hear 
the hum of voices in the populous pleasure-seeking 
town, its eyes may see the lost thousands in their 
strange attire crowding down the cramped ways, till at 
length something of the meaning and the pathos of it all 
will come home. 

Yet why should this place move us so much ? There 
are scores of dead cities strewn about the world, only 
more stripped by decay and man. I suppose it is because 
of the feebleness of our fancy, that cripple who finds it 
so hard to stir from the little plot of time upon which it 
is our chance to wander. Here it has crutches, here the 
evidences of the departed are plentiful. We see the bread 
that they baked, the trinkets which they purchased. The 
pleasures they pursued so fiercely, the sins that were their 
joy, the higher aspiration that touched them at times, 
the superstitions before which they cowered, are written 
of on every ruined stone. Therefore, thus aided by these 
helpful props of evidence they draw near to us and we to 
them. 

Vesuvius towering there, Vesuvius which saw it all 
and so much before from the very beginnings of the 
world, and will see so much hereafter till the end of the 
world, ought to stir us more, but it does not. It is a 
wondrous, an awe-inspiring phenomenon of Nature, no 
more, something above our human sympathy. But the 
stone hollowed by the hands of the dead, ah ! that stirs. 
We think that if we had lived then our palms would 
have helped to wear the edge of the solid water-trough, 
and comprehend, and are sorry. By the sign of this 



48 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



sharp example we remember that we too are making 
our faint marks upon such stones as we are fated to 
tread and handle. Other more imperceptible marks also 
upon things intangible and yet real which generations to 
come will look on with dull incomprehensive eyes, and 
though they know it not, in their own souls gather up 
the harvest. This knowledge makes us sympathetic, or 
at least I think so. 

In Naples men learned in the English tongue write 
works on Pompeii (to them a mine of wealth) for the 
benefit of the traveller. One of these we purchased 
for half a franc at the railway station. It is infinitely 
more entertaining than most guide-books. Here are a 
few extracts : — 

First of all our author is historical and tells us "it 
is mentioned by Pliny : a M. Erinnius, duumvir, a Pom- 
pean who was thundered at Pompeii." One wonders 
whether by this the author means that the duumvir was 
applauded at a theatre, or that he came in sudden and 
unexpected contact with the electric current. If so, his 
fate was scarcely so bad as that of Drusus, son of Claudius. 

" He was in Pompeii and took his pleasure to throw 
some pears in the air and then received them in his 
mouth, when one of those fruits strangled him, stopping 
up his throat." 

What an occupation for the son of an emperor who 
had apparently but just become engaged, and what size 
can his mouth have been ! Further on our author, who 
by the way is too modest to record his name, describes 
some of the corpses found in the ashes. Here, for in- 
stance, are Nos. 39 and 40 : — 

"39. A young woman fallen upon her face, her head 
is leaned upon her arm, the coat or shift which she was 
covered of was brought near her head in the act of 
defense or fright, and causes all her beautiful naked body 
to be seen. Her shoulder has some trace of dress. It 
is still seen a lock of hair tied on her occiput. 



POMPEII 



49 



" 40. A young woman having a ring to her finger, to 
her foot a buskin. Her leg is admirable." 

Will some scholar kindly place the god or goddess 
described thus darkly as " another womanish divinity of 
an uncertain determination " ? Perhaps the fact that 
Neptune " on foot " is said to be leaning upon her 
shoulder may assist the student. 

I will pass over the account of " a xystus " adorned 
with porticoes which protect it from the " ardours of the 
sun," although curiously enough " in one of the columns 
is the augury that was made to a girl that she may 
sneeze, that is pleasingly." After this no wonder that 
many find the customs and manners of the ancients 
curious and hard to understand. But to proceed. Here 
is an extract in a style which may be commended to 
the notice of art critics. It has all the necessary 
obscurity and can scarcely fail to impress the unlearned. 
A bronze is under discussion. Our book describes it 
thus : — 

" The counterpoise represents a nice womanish bust 
with a covering on its head, under which are ivy leaves ; 
she has her hair curled on her deck. She leans softly 
on her cheek the index of her right hand, of which the 
pulse is adorned with a bracelet, and she turns her head 
on the right. A lamp and a beak ; J upiter, radiated on 
a disc, leaning on the sceptre and sitting between Minerva, 
armed with a lame, and the Abundance, with the cornu- 
copea, both seated." 

If it involves nothing incorrect, I confess that I 
should much like to learn what portion of a lady's frame 
is referred to as " her deck." 

There is, however, information as well as amusement 
in these pages. Thus they call attention to a graffito 
scribbled on the wall of the theatre which announces 
that a certain Methe, a player of farce, " amat Chrestum 
corde sit utreisque " — loves Christ from the heart, and 
prays that a like fate may befall others. So within two 

D 



50 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



generations of His death the Saviour had followers in 
heathen Pompeii even among actors. 

Here is another curious inscription conceived in a 
very different spirit, and scratched upon the wall of the 
house of a certain Cecilius Jucundus : " QvAs amat valeat. 
Pereat qui nescit amare. Bis tanto jpereat, quisquis amare 
vetat" which I may render, " May the lover flourish ! 
Bad luck to him who turns his back on love ! But to 
him who bars the lover's path — damnation ! " 

Jucundus was a banker. It is not difficult to ima- 
gine that this vigorous screed was inscribed upon the 
wall by some poor aspirant for his daughter's hand, to 
whom he had shown the door. 

The old tradition was that Pompeii perished during 
the summer months. As our guide-book points out, 
however, this theory is entirely refuted by one curious 
little circumstance. Near the Stabian Gate in December 
1889 were discovered some human bodies and a tree, 
which in the words of the book "was poured there, 
as one habitually is used to do the liquid chalk," so 
that " besides the impress of its thick past remained 
as engraved on the ashes" the remains of the leaves 
and of the berries. 

From the cast obtained thus obscurely (which we saw) 
botanists were enabled to identify the tree with its leaves 
and fruit as a variety of lauris nobilis, whereof the berries 
do not ripen until late autumn. As these particular berries 
were quite ripe when the ashes covered them, Pompeii, it 
is clear, must have perished in the winter months. 

I will confess that I leave this place with a deep 
professional grudge against that admirable romancer, 
the late Lord Lytton. Who is there of our trade that 
would not like to write a novel about Pompeii ? But 
Lytton bars the way. Not that it would be difficult 
to find another and quite different plot, It is his title 
which presages failure to all who would follow in his 
path. Had he called his book " Glaucus," or " The 



POMPEII 



51 



Blind Girl/' or " A Judgment from Heaven," or any- 
thing else, it would not have mattered. But every one 
has heard of the novel named " The Last Days of 
Pompeii," and he who tried to treat of that city and 
event with the pen of fiction would certainly hear of 
it also. It is even possible that he might become 
involved in correspondence on the hoary theme of 
literary plagiarism. 



CHAPTER V 



NAPLES TO LARNACA 

The morning of our departure from Naples came, and 
we departed, this time very early. Long before " the 
saffron- tinted dawn," as I remember when a boy at 
school I used to translate the Homeric phrase, had 
touched the red pillar of smoke above Vesuvius, I 
was up and doing my experienced best to arouse 
my companion, by arranging the electric lights in 
such an artistic fashion that their unveiled and con- 
centrated rays struck full upon his "slumber-curtained 
eyes." But he is an excellent sleeper, and the effort 
was a failure. Therefore stronger measures had to be 
found. 

At length we were off, the extreme earliness of 
the hour saving me something considerable in the matter 
of hotel tips. By the time we reached the station, 
however, every Italian connected with the place was 
wide-awake and quite ready to receive the largesse of 
the noble foreigner. I think that I had to fee about 
ten men at that station, at least eight of them for doing 
nothing. Gratuities were dispensed to the bus-conductor 
who introduced us to a porter; to the porter who led 
us three yards to the ticket office ; to an official who 
inspected the tickets after we had taken them ; to two 
other officials who showed us respectively the platform 
from which the train for Brindisi started and the place 
where the luggage must be booked ; to a superior person 
who announced that he would see the luggage properly 
booked, and to various other inferior persons, each of 

52 



NAPLES TO LARNACA 



53 



whom prepared to carry some small article to the plat- 
form. Then being called upon suddenly to decide, and 
very much afraid that the said small articles would 
vanish in transit, I determined upon the spur of the 
moment to accompany them to the carriage, leaving 
my nephew to attend to the registration of the heavier 
baggage. 

Even in that crowded tumultuous moment I had, 
it is true, my doubts of the wisdom of this arrangement, 
but remembering that on the last occasion when he per- 
formed this important office, the intelligent booking- 
clerk had managed to relieve my companion of half a 
napoleon, by the simple process of giving change to the 
amount of twenty centimes instead of ten francs twenty 
centimes, I was sure that experience would have made 
him very, very cautious. Presently he arrived radiant, 
having accomplished all decently and in order at the 
moderate expense of another few francs of tips. 

" Have you got the luggage- ticket ? " I asked with 
sombre suspicion. 

" Rather," he answered ; " do you suppose that I am 
green enough to come without it ? " and he showed me 
the outside of a dirty bit of paper. The outside, re- 
member, not the inside, for thereby hangs a very painful, 
moving tale. 

Well, we started, this time in great comfort, since, 
except for an Italian sportsman arrayed in quaint attire, 
we had the carriage to ourselves. We steamed past 
Pompeii and Sorrento, thence for hours climbing over 
huge mountain ranges covered with snow, sometimes 
almost to the level of the railway line. After these came 
vast stretches of plain. Then in the afternoon we 
travelled for many miles along the seashore, a very 
lonely strand fringed with pines blown by the prevalent 
winds to curious, horizontal shapes, as though a gardener 
had trimmed them thus for years. Ultimately once 
more we headed inland across the foot of Italy, and 



54 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



at last, after a journey of about thirteen hours, to my 
great relief, for I feared lest another train off the line 
might make us lose our boat, ran into Brindisi. 

Here to our joy the local Cook was in attendance, 
who put us into a cab, strictly charging us to "pay 
nothing to nobody." He announced further that he 
would follow presently to the mail steamer Isis with the 
heavy baggage, for which he took the ticket. 

We reached the Isis, a narrow, rakish-looking boat, 
found our cabin, and began to arrange things. While 
we were getting rid of the dust of our long journey I 
heard a voice outside, the voice of Cook, though strangely 
changed and agitated. 

" Mr. Haggard," said the voice, " Mr. Rider Haggard." 
" Yes," I answered ; " what's the matter ? I've paid 
for the passages at the office." 

" It isn't the passages, it's your luggage," he replied 
through the door ; " it's gone ! " 

I sank upon my berth. " Gone ? " I said feebly, 
" gone where ? " 

" To Reggio," replied the mournful voice, " Reggio on 
the other side of Italy, where you booked it to." 
" It was booked to Brindisi," I shouted. 
" Oh no, it wasn't," wailed the voice, " it was booked 
to Reggio ; here's the ticket." 

" Do you hear that ? " I said to my nephew, who, with 
his dripping head lifted from the basin, was staring at 
vacancy as though he had seen a ghost ; " do you hear 
that ? He says you booked the luggage to Reggio." 

" I didn't," he gasped ; " I gave them the tickets for 
Brindisi." 

A horrible thought struck me. " Did you examine 
the voucher ? " I asked. 

Then almost with tears he confessed that he had 
overlooked this formality. 

" My friend," I went on, " do you understand what 
you have done ? Has it occurred to you that this 



NAPLES TO LARNACA 



55 



exceedingly thick and uncomfortable brown suit, with 
three flannel shirts, a leather medicine-case, and some 
wraps and sundries are all that we possess to travel with 
to Cyprus, where, such is the hospitable nature of its 
inhabitants, we shall probably be asked out to dinner 
every night ? " 

" We've got some cigarettes and a revolver, and you 
can have my dinner-jacket, it is in the little bag," he 
answered with feeble inconsequence. 

I took the dinner-jacket at once; it was several sizes 
too small for me, but better than nothing. Then I 
expressed my feelings in language as temperate as I 
could command. Considering the circumstances it was, 
I think, wonderfully temperate. 

At this juncture the voice of the patient (and most 
excellent) representative of the world-wide majesty of 
Cook spoke as though in reverie through the door. 

" It is a strange thing," he said, " these sad accidents 
always happen to you gentlemen with double names. 
The last time it was to the great artist gentleman — 
how did he call himself ? Ah ! I have it. Mr. — Mr. — 
Melton Prior. He went on with nothing, quite nothing. 
His luggage too travelled to Reggio." 

Enough. Let oblivion take that dreadful hour. But 
the odd thing is that this is the second time in my life 
that the said " sad accident " has happened to me. Once 
before, bound to the East, did I arrive upon the mail- 
steamer at Brindisi to find that by some pretty caprice 
of the Italian railway officials my portmanteaus were at 
Milan, or elsewhere, and that I must travel to Egypt and 
sojourn there in what I stood up in, plus the contents of 
a hand-bag. I remember that on this occasion my suffer- 
ings were somewhat soothed by the melancholy state of 
an Australian family, who found themselves doomed to 
voyage to Sydney with an outfit that would not have 
cut up into an infant's layette. Their luggage also had 
gone to Reggio. 



56 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



As a matter of curiosity I should like to know why 
the Italians play these tricks with the belongings of 
travellers, as is their common and undoubted habit. To 
take the present case, it is true that my nephew neglected 
to study the scrawl upon the voucher, but really he 
was not to blame, for he gave the clerk the tickets 
for Brindisi, by which that functionary was bound to 
register the luggage. Moreover, every official in the 
station knew that we were going to Brindisi — a fact 
upon the strength of which many of them, under this 
pretext or that, had managed to extract something from 
my pocket. Yet quite calmly, although there was no 
press of business for we were almost the only passengers, 
they sent the luggage to Reggio. My own belief is that 
sometimes this kind of thing is done as a bad practical 
joke, or possibly to annoy the foreigner within their gates, 
and sometimes for the purposes of pillage. If this be so, 
the effort is eminently successful, especially when the un- 
fortunate victim has to catch a mail for the East and 
must leave his effects to take their chance. 

The Isis is one of the swift boats which carry the 
mail from Brindisi to Port Said. The bags leave London 
at nine on Friday night. By seven or eight on Sunday 
night they should be at Brindisi, and by Wednesday 
night or Thursday morning at Port Said, where the big 
boat awaits them. 

It is very curious to see these bags come on board. 
Somebody announces that the mail is in, and an officer 
takes his station opposite the gangway at a little table 
on which lies a great lined and printed form, while 
another officer stands by the gangway itself. Quarter- 
masters and sailors also station themselves at con- 
venient spots between it and the mail-room. Pre- 
sently there is a rumble, and a covered van drawn by 
a wretched-looking horse appears in the strong ring of 
electric light upon the quay. Attending it are an extra- 
ordinary collection of ragamuffins, of whom the use now 



NAPLES TO LAKNACA 



57 



becomes apparent. The van is unlocked by some one in 
charge, and the first ragamuffin is given a sack and a 
tally-stick. Up the gangway he trots, delivers the tally- 
stick to the quartermaster at its head, who calls out the 
destination of each bag to the officer at the table, who 
in his turn checks and enters it upon the sheet. That 
carrier trots away to the right towards the mail-room, 
where he delivers his bag and descends by a second 
gangway to the quay for another. 

Meanwhile his companions are following him like a 
stream of ants, each with a sack of letters on his shoulder 
and a tally-stick in his hand. When the tally-sticks 
come to the number of ten, they are placed in the 
section of a box that stands on the deck at the feet of 
the quartermaster. A hundred tally-sticks exactly fill 
this box, which is then replaced by another empty box. 
Thus an additional check is kept upon the number of 
the bags. 

Now that van is empty and another arrives, and so 
on and on for hours, till at last all the mail is safely 
'aboard, checked, and sorted. I believe that on this 
particular Sunday night the count amounted to some- 
thing over two thousand bags, which is not very heavy. 
One of the officers told me that the letters, &c, in which 
Great Britain sent her last Christmas wishes to the East 
filled nearly four thousand bags. As may be imagined, 
the introduction of the penny Imperial post is not likely 
to lessen these totals. 

Before the mail was all on board we were fast asleep, 
waking up the next morning to find the Isis tearing at 
about eighteen knots (she can run twenty-three) through 
a stormy sea and beneath a wet and sunless sky. By 
midday our course was taking us through the beautiful 
islands of the Greek Archipelago, to some of which we 
passed quite close. Here it was that we found most 
reason to mourn the lack of sunlight, which in this 
dripping weather caused even those green Ionian slopes 



58 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



to look cold and grey. Amongst other places we saw 
that Leucadian crag whence the Greek poetess Sappho 
leapt into the sea. Studying the spot I came to the 
conclusion that her nerve must have been almost as 
remarkable as her genius. Women very rarely commit 
suicide by jumping off a great height, especially into 
water. By the way, I wonder if Sappho was as beautiful 
as the bust in the Naples Museum, that was discovered 
at Pompeii or Herculaneum, I forget which, seems to 
suggest. Tradition describes her as small and dark, so 
perhaps the head is a fancy portrait by some great artist 
of a later age. So real and so full of life and intelligence 
is it, however, that whoever was its model must have 
been both a lovely and a clever woman. Indeed, genius 
seems to sit upon that brow of bronze and to look from 
those wide enamelled eyes. 

Leaving Brindisi late on Sunday night, early on 
the Wednesday morning we sighted the low shores of 
Egypt. By eight we were steaming past the well-re- 
membered breakwater at Port Said, very empty now on 
account of the war and the coal famine, and in another 
half-hour had cast anchor alongside the great liner which 
was ready to receive our mails. 

Once I spent three or four days in Port Said waiting 
for my steamer, and may claim, therefore, to know it 
fairly well. Of all the places I have visited during many 
travels I can recall but one that strikes me as more 
dreary. It is a fever-stricken hole named Frontera at 
the mouth of the Usumacinto River in Tabasco, that can 
boast the largest and fiercest mosquitoes in the whole world. 

However on this occasion we were destined to see 
but little of Port Said, since the vessel that was to take 
us on to Cyprus, named the Flora, would sail as soon as 
we had transhipped her mails. Accordingly, bidding 
farewell to the Isis and her kind commander, we took a 
boat and rowed across to the Flora, a small and ugly- 
looking vessel painted black, and belonging to the 



NAPLES TO LARNACA 59 



Austrian-Lloyd. On board of her I found no one who 
could speak any tongue I knew, and it was with some 
difficulty that at last, by the help of the stewards 
assistant, who understood a little French, I was able to 
explain that we wished to proceed to Larnaca. 

At the time it struck me as so odd that the English 
Government mails should be carried in a vessel thus dis- 
tinctly foreign, that afterwards in Cyprus I inquired into 
the reason. It seems that the Colonial Office, or rather the 
Treasury, are responsible. The Austrian-Lloyd line, being 
in the receipt of a subsidy from their Government, were 
able to make a lower tender for the transport of mails than 
another line, owned by a British company. So notwith- 
standing the manifest inconveniences of employing an 
alien bottom for this important purpose, which in certain 
political conditions might easily prove dangerous, the 
home authorities decreed that the contract should go to 
the foreigner. Perhaps they thought that the sacred 
principles of Free Trade, or rather of subsidised foreign 
competition, ought to prevail even in the matter of the 
conveyance of her Majesty's mails. 

Another thing became evident, that Cyprus is not a 
place of popular resort, since my nephew and I were the 
only first-class passengers in the ship. Unless he be 
a Government official, or some friend or connection of 
one of the very few British residents, it is not often, 
I imagine, that the Flora takes a traveller to the 
island. Still she provides for them, by printing a set 
of rules in English and hanging them on the companion. 
They cover much ground ; in them even politeness finds 
its place, since the reader is reminded that passengers 
being " persons of education, will pay a due regard to the 
fair sex." Reflection, however, seems to have suggested 
that this axiom might meet with too liberal a rendering. 
At any rate, farther down we are informed with grave 
sincerity that "gentlemen are not allowed to enter the 
cabins of the ladies." 



60 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



After the dull weather we had experienced between 
Italy and Egypt, the twenty-four hours' run of our lonely 
voyage to Larnaca was very pleasant, for the sun shone 
brightly, the wind did not blow, and the sea was blue as 
only the Mediterranean in its best moods knows how to 
be. When we got up next morning — we were provided, 
each of us, with a whole four-berth cabin, but the Flora 
does not boast a bath — it was to find that Cyprus was 
already in sight : a long, grey land with occasional moun- 
tains appearing here and there. 

Onward we steamed, watching a single white-sailed 
bark that slid towards us across the azure sea like some 
dove on outstretched wings, till at length we cast anchor 
in the roadstead off the little port of Larnaca, a pretty 
town lying along the seashore. Some miles away, and 
to our left as we face it, rises the mountain of the Holy 
Cross — I think that it is, or used to be called Oros 
Staveros by the Greeks, and by the Latins Monte Croce, 
at any rate in the time of Pocock. 

Felix Fabri, the German monk who made two pil- 
grimages to Palestine in or about the year 1480, 
tells how he visited this monastery and saw its relics. 
It will be remembered that St. Helena, the mother 
of Constantine the Great, who when an old woman 
journeyed to the Holy Land in 325 of our era, was so 
fortunate as to discover beneath the alleged site of the 
Holy Sepulchre, the veritable cross of our Lord together 
with that of one or both of the thieves who suffered 
with Him. But of this more hereafter. The cross of 
the good thief who, why I know not, has been named 
Dysma, she is said to have brought to Cyprus and 
established upon this mountain. Whether anything of 
it remains there now I cannot say, as I made no visit 
to the place either on this occasion or on a former 
journey in the island some fourteen years ago. This 
is what old Felix says about it. I quote here and else- 
where from the most excellent and scholarly translation of 



NAPLES TO LARNACA 



61 



his writings by Mr. Aubrey Stewart, M.A., which is unfortu- 
nately practically inaccessible to most readers, as it can only 
be obtained as part of the Library of the cc Palestine Pil- 
grims' Text Society " at a minimum cost of ten guineas : — 

" She " — i.e. St. Helena — " brought her own cross, that which 
had been Dysma's, entire from J erusalem to this mount, and here 
she built a great convent for monks, and a church within which she 
placed this cross as an exceeding holy relic. She ordered a chamber 
or closet to be built in the wall over against the altar, and placed 
the cross within it ; and there it stands unmoved even to this 
day, albeit the monastery itself has long since been overthrown, 
even to the ground, by the Turks and Saracens, and the monks 
of the Order of St. Benedict who once dwelt therein have been 
scattered. The position and arrangement of this cross in its 
place is wonderful. The cross stands in a blind window, and 
both its arms are let into holes made in the walls, and its foot is 
let into a hole made in the floor. But the holes which contain 
the arms of the cross and the foot of the cross are large out of 
all proportion, and the cross nowhere touches the wall, but is 
free and clear from contact with the wall on every side. The 
miracle which is noised abroad about the cross is that it hangs 
in the air without any fastening, and withal stands as firm as 
though it were fixed with the strongest nails or built into the 
wall, which nevertheless it is not, because all the three holes are 
very great, so that a man can put his hand into them and per- 
ceive by touch that there is no fastening there, nor yet at the 
back or at the head of the cross. I might indeed have searched 
this thing more narrowly than I did, but I feared God, and 
had no right to do that which I had forbidden others to do. I 
climbed this mount to show honour to the cross, not to try 
whether there was a miracle or not, or to tempt God. That 
this cross may be the more worthy of reverence, they have joined 
to it a piece of the true Cross of Christ." 

Felix Fabri was easily satisfied, as a mediaeval monk 
should be. So much for the cross of Dysma. 

Soon we were rowing ashore in the Government boat, 
a distance of three-quarters of a mile or so, for Larnaca is 
not a harbour, but an open roadstead — there are now no 



62 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



harbours worthy of the name in Cyprus. Landing at the 
pier we were at once conducted to the custom-house, and 
explained that we had nothing to declare. 

" But have you a revolver ? " asked the officer. 

I answered that I had. 

"Then I must trouble you to hand it over," he 
replied. " I will give you a receipt for it, and you can 
claim it when you leave the island." 

I looked what I felt, astonished, but obeyed. On in- 
quiry it appeared that the Cyprus Government has recently 
passed some legislation as to the importation of firearms. 
It would seem that murders had been somewhat frequent 
in the island, mostly carried out by shooting, hence the 
law. Whether it was intended to prevent respectable 
travellers who purpose journeying in the mountain dis- 
tricts from carrying a pistol for their own protection, is 
another matter. Doubtless in fact it was not ; but in 
Cyprus they have a great respect for the letter of the 
law, and therefore put this somewhat unnecessary query. 
For instance, they have another regulation — aimed, I 
suppose, at the exclusion of phylloxera — against the 
importation of seeds or plants, which has been known 
to work in an unforeseen manner. Thus a year or two 
ago a foreign royalty, I think it was the Prince of Naples, 
visited the island wearing a carnation in his buttonhole. 
His Royal Highness must have been somewhat amazed 
when a custom-house official leant forward and gently 
but firmly removed the contraband flower. 

I am told that this story is quite true, but it may 
be only a local satire upon the kindly providence of a 
patriarchal Government. 

It is right to add, however, that there is not the 
slightest need for a traveller of the ordinary stamp 
to carry any defensive weapon in Cyprus. Since the 
English occupation of the island at any rate, now some 
twenty years ago, no place can be more safe. In the 
wildest parts of it he who behaves himself has nothing 



NAPLES TO LARNACA 



63 



to fear from the natives, a kindly, gentle-natured race, 
Turk or Christian, although, as I have said, not averse 
to murdering each other upon occasion. But of this 
also more hereafter. 

Having delivered up the weapon of war and been given 
an elaborate receipt for the same, we proceeded to our 
hotel accompanied by a motley collection of various blood 
and colour, each of them bearing a small piece of our 
exiguous belongings, whereof the bulk, it will be remem- 
bered, had travelled to Reggio. These folk, however, are 
not exorbitant in their demands and do not grumble or 
ask for more. Tourists have not come to Cyprus to 
spoil it ; I never heard of an American even setting foot 
on the island, therefore a shilling here goes as far as five 
elsewhere. 

The hotel at Larnaca is now I believe the only one in 
Cyprus. It stands within a few feet of the shore — safely 
enough, for the sea is tideless — is comfortable, with large, 
cool rooms, and absurdly cheap. I grieve to add that its 
proprietor cannot make it pay. No travellers visit this 
lovely and most interesting isle, in ancient days the 
garden of the whole Mediterranean, therefore there are 
no hotels. Once there was one at Limasol, but it failed 
and converted itself into a hospital. He who would 
journey here must either rely upon tents, which are a 
poor shelter before the month of April, or upon the kind 
and freely offered hospitality of the Government officials. 
Naturally this lack of accommodation frightens away 
tourists, which for many reasons in a poor country like 
Cyprus is a vast pity. Yet until the tourist comes it is 
idle to expect that conveniences for his reception will be 
provided. So this matter stands. 

Where Larnaca now lies was once the ancient Citium, 
of which the marsh near at hand is believed to have 
been the harbour. Quite half of the present town, 
indeed, is said to be built upon the necropolis of Citium, 
whence comes its name, Larnaca, derived, it is supposed, 



64 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



from Zarnax, an urn or a sepulchre. The town is divided 
into two parts, Larnaca proper and the Marina along 
the seashore, which is reported to have been recovered 
within the last few centuries from the bed of the ocean. 

After luncheon we went to a house whose owner 
deals occasionally in curiosities. Of these and all 
antiquities indeed the export is forbidden except to 
the British Museum, private digging having been put a 
stop to in the island, as its inhabitants aver, in the 
especial interest of that institution. Here we saw a few 
nice things, but the price asked was impossible, £12 
being demanded for a set of little glass vases which I 
should have valued at 40 s. So we left the place, richer 
only by an Egyptian or Phoenician spear-head of Cyprian 
copper, a very excellent specimen, and walked to the 
upper town about a mile away to take tea with Mr. 
Cobham, the Commissioner. 

Mr. Cobham lives in a beautiful house which he has 
purchased. For generations it had been the abode of 
the British consuls at Larnaca, but was abandoned by 
them many years ago. Here in a noble room he has his 
unique collection of ancient books written by travellers 
during the last five or six centuries, and others dealing 
with, or touching on, Cyprus and its affairs. It is from 
these sources that its learned author has compiled the 
work known as Excerpta Cypria, which consists of transla- 
tions from their pages, a book invaluable to students, but 
now unhappily out of print. I considered myself for- 
tunate in being able to purchase a set of the sheets at 
an advanced price in the capital, Nicosia, where it was 
printed. 

Set upon a wall of the saloon in this house and 
although newly painted, dating from a century and a 
half or more ago, is a fine, carved example of the royal 
arms of England. This very coat, as Mr. Cobham has 
ascertained, used to stand over the doors of the old 
British Consulate during the tenancy of his house by 



NAPLES TO 



LARNACA 



65 



the consuls. When they left it was taken down and 
vanished, but within the last few years he found it in a 
stable in Larnaca, whence the carving was rescued, re- 
painted by some craftsman on board an English man-of- 
war which visited Cyprus, and after a hundred years or 
so of absence, returned in triumph to its old home. 

Cyprus is fortunate in possessing in Mr. Cobham an 
official who takes so deep an interest in her history, and 
spares no expense or pains in attempting its record. On 
the occasion of my visit he spoke to me very sadly of the 
vandalism which the authorities threaten to commit by 
the throwing down of the seaward wall, curtain-wall I 
think it is called, of the ancient, fortified city of Fama- 
gusta, in order, principally, that the stone and area may 
be made use of for the purposes of the railway, which it 
is proposed to construct between Famagusta and Nicosia. 
Of this suggested, but as yet happily unaccomplished 
crime, I shall have something to say on a later page. 



CHAPTER VI 



COLOSSI 

On the day following that of our arrival in Cyprus the 
Flora reappeared from Famagusta and about noon we went 
on board of her to proceed to Limasol, some forty or fifty 
miles away, where we were engaged to stay a week or ten 
days. The traveller indeed is lucky when he can find a 
chance of making this journey in the course of an after- 
noon by boat, instead of spending from ten to fifteen hours 
to cover it in a carriage. Although Cyprus in its total 
area is not much, if any, larger than the two counties of 
Norfolk and Suffolk, locomotion is still difficult owing to 
the impassable nature of the ways and the steepness and 
frequency of the mountains. When I visited it fourteen 
or fifteen years ago there were no roads to speak of in 
the island, except one of a very indifferent character 
between Larnaca and Nicosia. The Turks, its former 
masters, never seem to make a road ; they only destroy 
any that may exist. Now in this respect matters are 
much improved. The English Government, out of the 
pitiful sums left at its command after the extraction 
from the colony of every possible farthing towards the 
payment of the Turkish tribute, has by slow degrees con- 
structed excellent roads between all the principal towns, 
with bridges over the beds of the mountain torrents. 
But as yet in the country districts nothing of the sort 
has been attempted. 

With us were embarked a number of lambs, little 
things not more than a week or two old, bought, I 
suppose, for the provisioning of the ship. At this season 

66 



COLOSSI 



67 



of the year everybody in Cyprus lives upon lamb. It 
was melancholy to see the tiny creatures, their legs tied 
together, heaped one upon another in the bottoms of 
large baskets, whence, bleating piteously for their mothers, 
they were handed up and thrown upon the deck. A 
more satisfactory sight to my mind were one or two cane 
creels half filled with beautiful brown-plumaged wood- 
cock, shot or snared by native sportsmen upon the moun- 
tain slopes. 

On board the steamer, a fellow -passenger to Limasol, 
whither he was travelling to negotiate for the land upon 
which to establish a botanical garden, was Mr. Gennadius, 
the Director of Agriculture for the island. He told me 
what I had already observed at Larnaca — that the orange 
and citron trees in Cyprus, which on the occasion of my 
former visit were beautiful to behold, are to-day in danger 
of absolute destruction, owing to the ravages of a horrible 
black scale which fouls and disfigures fruit and leaves 
alike. (Avnidia coceinea or Avnidia orantii.) 

For the last dozen years or so this blight has been 
increasingly prevalent, the mandarin variety of fruit 
alone showing any power of resisting its attacks. The 
proper way to treat the pest is by a number of sprayings 
with a mixture of from twenty to twenty-five per cent, 
of soft soap to eighty or seventy-five per cent, of warm 
water. A dressing thus prepared destroys the scale by 
effecting a chemical union of the alkali of the soap with 
the fatty matter in the organism of the parasite, or fail- 
ing this stifles it by glazing it over and excluding the air 
necessary to its existence. Mr. Gennadius believes that 
if this treatment could be universally adopted, scale would 
disappear from Cyprus within a few years. 

But here comes the difficulty. For three centuries 
the Cypriote has been accustomed to Turkish rule with 
its great pervading principle of Kismet. If it pleases 
Allah to destroy the orange-trees (in the case of the Chris- 
tian peasant, read God) so let it be, he says, and shrugs 



68 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



his shoulders. Who am I that I should interfere with 
the will of Heaven by syringing ? Which being trans- 
lated into Anglo-Saxon means, " I can't be bothered to 
take the trouble." If the Director of Agriculture in 
person or by proxy would appear three or four times a 
year in the sufferer's garden with the wash ready made 
and a squirt and proceed to apply it, the said sufferer 
would look on and smoke, making no objection. Beyond 
this he will rarely go. 

Therefore unless the blight tires of attack it begins 
to look as though the orange is doomed in Cyprus. This 
is a pity, as that fruit does very well there, and the mildew 
which threatened it at one time was taken at its com- 
mencement and conquered by means of powdered sulphur 
puffed about the trees with bellows, Government distribut- 
ing the sulphur at cost price. 

About three hours after leaving Larnaca the vessel 
passes a sloping sward clothed with young corn and 
carob- trees that, backed by lofty peaks of the Trooidos 
range, runs from a hill-top to the lip of the ocean. Here 
once stood Amathus, a great city of immemorial an- 
tiquity which nourished down to Roman times if not 
later, and ultimately, it is said, was destroyed by an 
earthquake. Now all that is left of it are acres of 
tumbled stone and a broken fragment of fortress, whether 
ancient or mediaeval I cannot say, against the walls of 
which the sea washes. It is told that here, or at some 
later town built upon the same site, Richard Cceur-de- 
Lion landed when he took Cyprus from the Emperor 
Isaac Comnenus. 

Wonderful indeed is it for us, the children of this 
passing hour, to look at that grey time-worn coast and 
as we glide by to reflect upon the ships and men that it 
has seen, who from century to century came up out of 
the deep sea to shape its fortunes for a while. Who 
were the first ? No one knows, but very early the fleets 
of Egypt were here. Then followed the Phoenicians, those 



COLOSSI 



69 



English of the ancient world as they have been called, 
who like eagles to the carcass, gathered themselves 
wherever were mines to be worked or moneys to be 
made. They have left many tombs behind them and in 
the tombs works of art, some of them excellent enough. 
Thus before me as I write stands a brouze bull made by 
Phoenician hands from Cyprian copper, a well-modelled 
animal full of spirit, with a tail that wags pleasingly 
upon a balled joint. 

After the Phoenicians, or with them perhaps, were 
Greeks of the Mycenian period. Their tombs also 
celebrate a glory that is departed, as the British Museum 
can bear witness. Next to the Greek the Persian ; then 
the satraps of Alexander the Great ; then the Ptolemies ; 
then galleys that bore the Roman ensign which flew for 
many generations ; then the Byzantine emperors — these 
for seven centuries. 

After this a new flag appears, the lions of England 
flaunting from the ships of war of Richard the First. 
He took the place and sold it to Guy de Lusignan, King 
of Jerusalem so called, whose descendants ruled here for 
three centuries, till at length the island passed into the 
hands of the Venetians. These only held it eighty years, 
and after them came the most terrible fleet the Cy- 
prian Sea has seen, that which flew the Crescent. For 
three centuries Cyprus groaned and withered under the 
dreadful rule of the Turk, till at last a few gentlemen 
arrived in a mail-steamer and for the second time in the 
history of the island ran up the flag of Britain. How 
long will it float there, I wonder ? 

It was very interesting to watch the beautiful gulls 
that followed the vessel off this coast, the wind blowing 
against them making not the slightest difference to the 
perfect ease of their motion. So near did they hang 
that I could see their quick, beady eyes glancing here 
and there, and the strong bills of a light pink hue. 
From time to time as I watched, one of them would 



70 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



catch sight of something eatable in the water. Then 
down he went and suddenly from the feathers of his 
underpart out shot his claws, also pink-coloured, just 
as though he were settling upon a tree or rock. Why, I 
wonder, does a gull do this when about to meet the 
water ? To break his fall perhaps. At least I can 
suggest no other reason, unless in the dim past his pro- 
genitors were wont to settle upon trees and he is still 
unable to shake off an hereditary habit. 

At length on the low mountain-hedged coast-line 
appeared the white houses, minarets, and scattered palms 
of Limasol, with its jetty stretching out into the blue 
waters. The town looked somewhat grown, otherwise its 
aspect seems much the same as when first I saw it many 
years ago. 

So we landed, and after more custom-house form- 
alities, marched through the crowded streets of the little 
town, preceded by stalwart Cypriotes bearing our belong- 
ings, to dine (in borrowed garments) with the kind friends 
who were awaiting us upon the pier. 

Our first occupation on the following morning was to 
retain the services of three mules and their coal-black 
muleteer, doubtless the offspring of slaves imported in 
the Turkish days, known to us thenceforth by a cor- 
ruption of his native name or designation which we 
crystallised into " Cabbages." For a sum of about thirty 
shillings a week this excellent and intelligent person 
placed himself and his animals at our disposal, to go 
whither we would and when we would. 

Our first expedition was to a massive tower, or rather 
keep, called Colossi, which stands at a distance of about 
six miles from LimasoL, in the midst of very fertile fields 
upon the Paphos road. Off we went, my nephew and 
myself riding our hired mules and the rest of the party 
upon their smart ponies, which in Cyprus are very good 
and cheap to buy and feed. 

I have now had considerable experience of the mule 



COLOSSI 



71 



as an animal to ride, and I confess that I hate him. He 
has advantages no doubt. Over rough ground in the 
course of an eight or ten hours' day he will cover as 
great a distance as a horse, and in the course of a week 
or less he will wear most horses down. Also he will live 
somehow where the horse would starve. But what a 
brute he is ! To begin with, his fore-quarters are invari- 
ably weak, and feel weaker than they are. The Cypriote 
knows this and rides him on a native saddle, a kind of 
thick padded quilt so cruppered that he is able to sit far 
back, almost on the animal's tail indeed, as, doubtless for 
the same reason, the costermonger rides a donkey. To 
the stranger, until he grows accustomed to it, this saddle 
is most uncomfortable, but old residents in the island 
generally prefer to use it upon a long journey. Also it is 
dangerous to the uninitiated, since the stirrups are very 
short. Not being fixed they slide from side to side, 
suddenly lengthening themselves, let us say to the right, 
with any unguarded movement, which will produce a 
proportionate curtailment on the left and the unexpected 
consequence that the traveller finds himself face down- 
wards on the ground. With a European saddle this 
particular accident cannot happen, also it is more com- 
fortable for a short journey. As a set-off to this advan- 
tage, however, the rider's weight comes upon that portion 
of his steed which is least able to support it, namely the 
withers. The result is that the mule, especially if pushed 
out of its customary amble, sometimes falls as though it 
were shot, propelling him over its head. 

It is a mistake to suppose, also, that these creatures 
are always sure-footed ; many of them stumble abomin- 
ably although they do not often actually fall. Never 
shall I forget my first mule-ride in Cyprus in the days 
when there were no roads. It was from Nicosia to 
Kyrenia, a distance of about sixteen miles over a moun- 
tain path. The muleteer into whose charge I was given 
was a huge man weighing at least eighteen stone, and I 



72 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



thought to myself that where this monster could go, 
certainly I could follow. 

In this I was right, I did follow, but at a very con- 
siderable distance. Mr. Muleteer perched himself upon 
his animal, doubtless one of the best in the island, looking 
in his long . robes for all the world like a gigantic and 
half-filled sack, and off we ambled. Scarcely were we 
clear of the town when my mule, unaccustomed, I sup- 
pose, to the weight upon his withers and the European 
saddle, began to stumble. I do not exaggerate when I 
say that he stumbled all the way to Kyrenia, keeping me 
absolutely damp with apprehension of sudden dives on to 
my head down precipitous and unpleasant places. Mean- 
while Mr. Muleteer, very possibly anticipating my diffi- 
culties, had been careful to place about five hundred 
yards between us, a distance which he maintained 
throughout the journey. I yelled for assistance — in 
fact I wished to persuade him to exchange mules — but 
either he would not or he could not hear ; moreover he 
had no knowledge of my tongue, or I of his. So we 
accomplished that very disagreeable journey. 

Once, however, I made one much more dangerous, 
this time over the rarely travelled mountains of Chiapas 
in Mexico. My companions, I remember, had excellent 
mules — they lived in the countiy ; that given to me as 
the lighter weight was weak and poor, with no fore-legs 
worth mentioning. We scrambled up the mountains 
somehow, but when it came to descending, the fun began. 
A road in Tabasco, then at any rate, was made of three 
component parts. First, a deep and precipitous ditch worn 
out by the feet of generations of animals, covered at the 
bottom with from six inches to a foot of red butter, or 
clay quite as greasy as butter, down which one slowly 
slithered. Secondly, stretches, sometimes miles in length, 
of swamp land where the path consists of little ridges of 
hard clay about two feet apart, the space between each 
ridge into which the mule must step, filled with some 



COLOSSI 



73 



three feet of liquid and tenacious mud that often reached 
to the saddle-flap. Thirdly, when the swamps were 
passed great tracts of the most grizzly precipices, which 
to my taste were worst of all. Along these steeps the 
path, never more than three to five feet in width, would 
run across boulder-strewn and sloping rock very slippery 
in nature. Below yawned chasms more or less sheer, of 
anything from two to fifteen hundred feet in depth. 

Now a mule always chooses the extreme edge of a 
precipice. For this reason : its load is commonly bound 
on in large, far-protruding bales or bags. Were it there- 
fore to walk on the inner side of the path, it would con- 
stantly strike its burden against the cliff, so, not being 
troubled with nerves, it clings to the outer edge. A 
common result is that in going round a corner it meets 
another mule proceeding from the opposite direction. 
Thereon in the attempt to struggle past one of the pair 
vanishes into space and with it the load, merchandise 
or man. 

On this particular Mexican journey I very nearly 
came to a sudden and untimely end. The mule will 
not go your way, he always goes his own. At one point 
in the precipice path it forked, the lower fork being 
rough but safe and solid, the upper, which travelled 
round some twenty yards and then again joined the 
lower, smooth but exceeding greasy. The mule insisted 
upon taking the top road, with the result that when we 
reached its apex he began to slide. Down we shot, ten 
or fifteen paces to the very edge of that awful cliff 
and, I confess it without shame, I have rarely been in 
such a fright in my life. Indeed I thought that I must 
be gone, there seemed no help for it, since to dismount 
was quite impossible. At the utter verge of the gulf, 
however, the animal put on a sort of vacuum brake of 
which a mule alone has the secret, and when its head 
was absolutely hanging over it, we stopped. That day 
also this same trusty creature fell with me in the midst 



74 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of a flooded river, and in the evening I ended an enter- 
taining journey by being slung across another roaring 
torrent some eighty yards wide in a loop of string 
attached to a very rotten rope, along which I was pulled 
in jerks. But of the varied experiences of that expedi- 
tion I must not stop to tell. I lived through it, so let its 
memory be blessed. 

Still I do not wish to asperse the mule, as upon a 
long journey a really good ambler is worth untold wealth. 
Such as a general rule, however, do not fall to the lot of 
the visitor, who has to take what he can get at the time ; 
as frequently as not, pack animals, which have never 
carried a man before. 

The mule is very cunning. I saw one in Cyprus, a 
noted creature which always looks to see whether the 
man who purposes to ride him is or is not wearing spurs. 
If he is he does not mount that day, or at least until the 
spurs are off'. The next thing this mule looks at is the 
whip. Should it be a goad such as the natives use, he 
resigns himself to circumstances ; if a mere useless walk- 
ing-stick, well, he will not travel fast that trip. 

One more thing about the mule ; it is hopeless to try 
to ride him in the company of horses. The horse has 
his paces of walk, trot, and canter, and the mule his, an 
amble, so that however close together their riders may 
find themselves at the end of a day's journey, during the 
course of it they will be widely separated. 

Much of the land through which we rode to Colossi 
was under crops of wheat and barley, the latter now 
coming into ear. The cultivation struck me as generally 
very poor, but what can one expect in a country where 
they merely scratch the surface of the soil, and so far as 
I could see never use manure ? So shallow is their 
ploughing that in most cases squills and other bulbous 
roots are not dislodged by it, but grow on among the 
corn, where, dotted about, also stand many carob-trees, 
of which the fruit, a bean, is the basis of Thorley's and 



COLOSSI 



75 



other foods for cattle. On the patches of uncultivated 
land a great many very beautiful anemones, the har- 
bingers of spring, were in flower, also large roots of 
asphodel with its stiff sword-shaped leaves. This was the 
flower of which the Greek poets were so fond of singing. 
Their wars and labours o'er, the heroes are to repose 

'* . . . in the shadowy field 
Of asphodel." 

In point of fact it is in my opinion an unpleasing 
plant, the flowers, which spring from a tall stem, being 
small individually and neutral-tinted. Also they have 
this peculiarity ; if cut and set in a room, they cause the 
place to smell as though many cats had slept there. 

A ride of about an hour brought us to Colossi. That 
the tOAver in its present shape was built or repaired in the 
Lusignan time is evident from the coats of arms — very 
beautifully cut — of the orders of the Knights Templars 
and St. John which still appear upon the east face of the 
fortress. On one of these shields, that below the other 
three, all the four quarters carry a fleur-de-lys and 
nothing else. Another, the centre of the three in the 
upper line, immediately beneath the crown which seems 
to take the place of a crest, has four crosses in the 
dexter quartering, and a rampant lion on the rest. I say 
of the three coats, but as a matter of fact there are only 
two, the third, which has been removed, being repre- 
sented by an ugly gaping hole. It seems that some 
cantankerous old person who still lives in the village 
had a lawsuit, which he lost, as to the ownership of this 
tower of Colossi. In order to reassert his rights, however, 
he wrenched out one of the coats-of-arms and took it off to 
his house, where it remains. In the interest of the archae- 
ology of the island the Government ought to insist upon 
its being restored, or if necessary to replace it by force. 1 

1 Since the above passage was written, I hear that on the death of 
the individual spoken of, a search was made for the missing shield. It 
has vanished quite away — probably by secret burial ! — H. E. H, 



76 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



The tower itself, according to my rough, pacings, is a 
square of about fifty-seven feet internal measurement, and 
from sixty to seventy feet in height. It is a very massive 
building still in fair order, although I suppose that it has 
not been repaired for centuries. Now — so low are the 
mighty fallen — it serves only as a grain and chaff store 
for the surrounding farm. Its bottom storey, which is 
strongly vaulted, evidently was used for soldiers' quarters 
and dungeons. Above is a fine chamber now partitioned 
off, which occupies the whole square of the castle and is 
adorned with a noble, vaulted fireplace stamped on either 
side with a fleur-de-lys. The tradition is that Richard 
Cceur-de-Lion spent his honeymoon with Berengaria in 
this chamber after rescuing her vi et armis from the 
Emperor Isaac, whom he defeated in the plains below. 
There is another story which I have heard but am unable 
to trace, namely that Richard in his hurry to attack the 
forces of the Emperor outrode his companions, and reach- 
ing this tower of Colossi, shook his lance and galloped 
about it alone calling to Isaac, who was a poor creature 
and had not the slightest wish to accept the invitation, 
to come out and fight him. 

A narrow winding stair of the usual Norman type, 
whereof the ends of the steps themselves form the central 
supporting column, leads to the cement roof, which is 
flat, as is common in Cyprus. Hence the view is very 
beautiful, for beneath lies a wide stretch of country, now 
looking its best in the green garment of springing crops, 
while to the right the eye is caught by a great salt 
lake, once a source of considerable revenue to the island. 
This it might be again indeed, were it not that with 
the peculiar ineptitude and want of foresight which dis- 
tinguished the agreement concluded by the Government 
of this country as to the occupation of Cyprus, we have 
promised the Turks not to work it in competition with 
other salt lakes of their own on the mainland. Loveliest 
of all perhaps is the blue background of the measureless, 



COLOSSI 



77 



smiling sea, dotted here and there with white-sailed 
ships. 

Projecting from this roof upon one side is a curious 
grating of massive stone, of which presently I guessed the 
use. Immediately beneath hung the portcullis of the 
castle, whereof the wooden rollers or pulleys are still to 
be seen. Doubtless this grating was designed as a place 
of vantage whence the defenders could let fall stones or 
boiling oil and water upon the heads of those who 
attacked the drawbridge. 

Some rich man ought to buy Colossi, sweep away the 
filthy farm-buildings about it, and restore the tower to 
its original grandeur. With suitable additions it would 
make a delightful country-house. 

Night was falling before we came home to Limasol. 
The last glow of sunset still lingered on the white walls 
and red roofs of the scattered houses, while above them 
here a feathery palm, and there a graceful minaret stood 
out against the pale green sky in which the moon shone 
coldly. 



CHAPTER VII 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 

On Sunday we attended church in the Sergeants' room, 
a congregation perhaps of twelve or fifteen people. 
Limasol has a chapel belonging to it which was once 
used for the troops, but as it seems that the War Office, 
or the Treasury, I am not sure which, lay claim to the 
altar rails and benches, no service is now held there. 
In Cyprus as elsewhere there is such a thing as Red 
Tape. 

After luncheon I accompanied Mr. Michell, the Com- 
missioner, to a grand Greek wedding to which he had 
kindly procured me an invitation. On arriving at the 
house we were conducted upstairs to a large central 
room, out of which opened other rooms. In one of 
these stood the bride dressed in white, a pretty, dark- 
eyed girl, to whom we were introduced. By her, arrayed 
in evening clothes, was the bridegroom, a Greek, who is 
registrar of the local court, and about them their re- 
spective parents and other relatives. In the main apart- 
ment were assembled a mixed crowd of friends, guests, and 
onlookers. Near its centre stood a marble-topped table 
arranged as an altar with two tall candlesticks wreathed 
in orange blossoms, a cup of sacramental wine, two cakes 
of sacramental bread, a silver basket holding two wreaths 
of orange blossom with long satin streamers attached, 
and a copy of the Gospels beautifully bound in embossed 
silver. 

Presently a procession of six priests entered the room, 
attired all of them in magnificent robes of red and blue 

78 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 



79 



worked with silk, gold and silver. They wore tall 
Eastern-looking hats very much like those affected by 
Parsees and had their hair arranged in a pigtail, which 
in some instances hung down their backs and in others 
was tucked up beneath the head-dress. All of them 
were heavily bearded. 

Most of these priests were striking in appearance, 
with faces by no means devoid of spirituality. Indeed, 
studying them, it struck me that some of the Apostles 
might have looked like those men. The modern idea of 
the disciples of our Lord is derived in the main, perhaps, 
from pictures by artists of the Renaissance school, of 
large- made, brawny individuals, with wild hair and very 
strongly-marked countenances, quite different from the 
type that is prevalent in the East to-day. It is probable 
that these fanciful portraits have no trustworthy basis to 
recommend them to our conviction ; that in appearance 
indeed the chosen twelve did not differ very widely from 
such men of the more intellectual stamp, as are now to 
be seen in Cyprus and Syria. But this is a question 
that could be argued indefinitely, one moreover not 
susceptible of proof. 

Tradition, however, curiously unvarying in this in- 
stance, has assigned to the Saviour a certain type of face 
which, with differences and modifications, is not unlike 
that of at least two of the priests whom I saw at this 
ceremony. They looked good men, intellectual men, men 
who were capable of thought and work — very different, 
for example, in their general aspect and atmosphere to 
the vast majority of those priests whom the traveller sees 
in such a place as Florence. Still the reputation of 
these Greek clergy is not uncommonly malodorous. 
Critics say hard things of them, as the laity do of the 
priests in South America. Probably all these things are 
not true. In every land the clergyman is an individual 
set upon a pedestal at whom it is easy to throw dirt, and 
when the dirt strikes it sticks, so that all the world may 



80 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



see and pass by on the other side. Doubtless, however, 
here as elsewhere there are backsliders, and of these, 
after the fashion of the world, we hear more than of the 
good and quiet men who do their duty according to their 
lights and opportunities and are still. 

When all the preliminaries were finished the bride 
and bridegroom took their places before the table-altar 
which I have described, and crossed themselves cere- 
moniously. Then the service began. It was long and 
impressive, consisting chiefly of prayers and passages of 
Scripture read or chanted by the different priests in turn, 
several men standing round them who were, I suppose, 
professionals, intoning the responses with considerable 
effect. At an appointed place in the ceremony a priest 
produced two rings with which he touched the foreheads 
and breasts of the contracting parties, making with them 
the sign of the cross. One of these rings was then put 
on by the bridegroom and the other, oddly enough over 
her glove, by the bride. 

At later periods of the service the silver-covered 
book of the Gospels was given to the pair to kiss, and 
cotton-seed, emblematic apparently of fertility, like our 
rice, was thrown on to them from an adjoining room. 
Also, and this was the strangest part of the ceremony, 
the two wreaths that I have described were taken from 
the silver basket and set respectively upon the brow of 
the bridegroom and the veil, already wreath-crowned, 
of the bride, where it did not sit at all well, giving her, 
in fact, a somewhat bacchanalian air. The bridegroom 
also looked peculiar with this floral decoration perched 
above his spectacles, especially as its pendent satin tails 
were seized by six or eight of his groomsmen of all ages who, 
with their help — the bride being similarly escorted by her 
ladies — proceeded to drive the pair of them thrice round 
the altar-table. Indeed this part of the service, however 
deeply symbolical it may be, undoubtedly had a comic side. 
Another rite was that of the kissing by the priests of the 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 81 



wreaths when set upon the heads of the contracting 
parties, and the kissing of the hands of the priests by the 
bride and bridegroom. 

After these wreaths had been removed the newly- 
married pair partook of the Communion in both kinds, 
biting thrice at the consecrated cake of bread that was 
held to their mouths, and drinking (I think) three sips 
of the wine. This done the elements were removed. 
The ceremony ended with a solemn blessing delivered 
by the head priest and the embracing of the bride and 
bridegroom by their respective relations. At this point 
the bride wept after the fashion of ladies in her situation 
throughout the world. Indeed she was moved to tears 
at several stages of the service. 

After it was over, in company with other guests we 
offered our congratulations to the pair, drank wine to 
their healths and partook of sweetmeats. Also we in- 
spected the nuptial chamber, which was adorned with 
satin pillows of a bright and beautiful blue. I am in- 
formed, but of this matter I have no personal knowledge, 
that the friends of the bride stuff her mattress with great 
ceremony, inserting in it pieces of money and other 
articles of value. So we bade them good-bye, and now 
as then I wish to both of them every excellent fortune 
in life. 

It struck me as curious that with so many churches 
close at hand this rite should have been celebrated in a 
room. The last solemn ceremony connected with the 
fortunes of man at which I assisted in a private house 
was in Iceland amid the winter seas, far away from this 
southern home of Venus. At a stead where I was stay- 
ing dwelt an aged man, a relative of the owners of the 
farm whom they were supporting out of charity. There 
is no poor-law in Iceland, so relations are legally obliged 
to take its place, a state of affairs that must lead to 
curious complications. 

While I was in the house — a lonely place far from 

F 



82 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



any other stead — the old man died. They made him a 
coffin and laid him in it, and I was invited to be present 
at the ceremony which followed. It consisted chiefly of 
a long and most beautiful chant which, as I was told, 
had come down for many generations but has never been 
printed. All present in the room, perhaps a dozen 
people, intoned this solemn chant, standing round the 
coffin where the dead man lay with the light shining 
upon his snowy beard and calm majestic face. Then 
they prayed and the coffin was closed. Afterwards I saw 
a little party of rough, earnest men carry it over the 
rocks down to the head of the fiord where a boat was 
waiting. There they laid it and rowed away till they were 
swallowed up in the awesome loneliness of mountain, sky, 
and sea which seemed to sleep beneath the blue and 
ghostly shadows of the Iceland summer night. 

To return to Cyprus; later in the afternoon of the 
wedding we went for a ride to the military camp, about 
three miles from Limasol. Once there was a regiment 
quartered here, but the garrison is now, I think, reduced 
to a single company. It would be difficult to find a 
healthier or more convenient site whereat to station 
soldiers, the place being high and the water excellent. 
Perhaps those empty huts will be filled again some day. 

On our way back we passed through a grove of the 
most gigantic olive-trees that I ever saw. Those in the 
Garden of Gethsemane seem small compared to them. 
Having a rule in my pocket I dismounted and took the 
measure of one of these. It proved to be approximately 
fifty feet in circumference by sixteen in diameter at the 
ground, but of course was almost hollow. How old must 
that tree be ? Taking into consideration the hard wood 
and slow-growing habit of the olive, I imagine that in 
the time of the Romans, and very possibly in those of 
the Ptolemies, it was already bearing fruit. Perhaps a 
Mycenian, or one of Alexander's legionaries, planted it, 
who can say ? Probably, too, it will last for another three 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 83 



or four hundred years before, in the grip of slow decay, 
that end overtakes it which awaits everything earthly, 
not excepting the old earth herself. 

One morning Mr. Ma^rogordato, the Commandant of 
Police for the Limasol district, to whose kindness I owe 
many of the photographs of scenes in Cyprus which are 
reproduced in these pages, took us to see the ancient 
fortress of the town, now used as its prison. The road 
to this castle passes through a disused Turkish graveyard 
where Mr. Mavrogordato has had the happy thought to 
plant trees which, in that kindly air and soil, are now 
growing up into a welcome patch of greenery and shade. 
This castle is a massive building in stone belonging 
apparently to the Venetian period, that is, above ground, 
for the chapel and vaults below are Gothic. The in- 
terior is kept, most scrupulously clean and whitewashed. 
Round the central well run galleries in two storeys, which 
galleries are divided into cells whereof the iron gates are 
secured with large and resplendent brass padlocks. I 
do not think that I ever saw padlocks which shone so 
bright. From side to side of the second storey, stretched 
across the deep well beneath, is an ugly-looking black 
balk of timber, and screwed into it are two bolts and eyes 
of singularly uncompromising and suggestive appearance. 
This is the gallows beam, so placed and arranged that 
the prisoners in the cells have the advantage of a daily 
contemplation of the last bridge of evil footsteps. An 
execution from that beam, and there have been several, 
I believe, must create quite an excitement among the 
wrong-doers of Limasol. 

It is curious, by the way, although I daresay that 
the thought may never have occurred to the reader, how 
singularly ugly are the instruments of judicial death and 
torment. Take a rack, for instance. Even those who 
had not the slightest idea of its sinister uses would ex- 
claim — " What a hideous thing ! " I have seen a certain 
rack in one of the old cities of North Holland, Alkmaar 



84 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



or Hoorn, I think, whereof the mere appearance is dis- 
tressing ; yet it has none of the superfluous complications 
of more highly finished instruments of its class. Indeed 
it is of a stern simplicity ; a board, two rollers, two wind- 
lass handles and trestle legs bolted together, very stout 
and broad-footed. Yet the man who made it contrived 
to fill its every line with a horrible suggestiveness. Thus 
the plank, like the bottom of some old coffins, is cut in 
and out to the shape of the human body, and each other 
part has some separate quaintly-dreadful look. Again 
how ugly are a beheading-block and its companion axe. 
Even a pair of stocks is not ornamental, and I am told 
that the new electrical machine of death now used in 
the United States is a thing hideous to behold. 

The subject is disagreeable, so I will not treat of it 
further, except to say generally that there seems to be 
some mysterious rapport between violent sufferings and 
deaths and the instruments which man has found most 
convenient to produce them. Here we have another 
exemplification of the old proverb — like to like — the 
cruel things to the cruel deeds. But this matter is too 
large to enter upon in the pages of a book of travel. 

On the occasion of my visit, amongst other convicts 
there were in the Limasol prison, contemplating the 
gallows-beam aforesaid, four men who were accused of the 
murder of a fellow-villager suspected of having poisoned 
their cattle. Murder is a crime of not uncommon occur- 
rence in Cyprus, where many of the inhabitants are very 
poor and desirous of earning money, even in reward of the 
destruction of a neighbour with whom they have no quarrel. 
It has been proved in the course of investigation of some 
of these cases that the fee paid was really absurdly small, 
so low as ten shillings indeed, or, as one of the judges 
informed me, in the instance of a particularly abominable 
slaughter, four shillings and no more. Some of the 
victims suffer on account of quarrels about women, as in 
Mexico, where in a single village street on a Sunday 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 85 



morning, after the orgies of a Saturday night, I have seen 
as many as three dead, or at least two dead and one 
dying. More frequently, however, in Cyprus the victim 
is a downright bad character of whom a community are 
determined to be rid, so that in fact the murder, as in the 
present example, partakes of the nature of lynch-law. 

After the commission of the crime its perpetrators, if 
suspected, hide themselves in the mountains, where they 
must be hunted down like wild beasts. One party of 
these outlaws defied arrest for quite a number of months, 
during which time they took several shots at the pursu- 
ing Mr. Mavrogordato. Ultimately, however, they were 
themselves shot, or caught and hanged. 

The view from the top of the castle was perhaps 
even more beautiful than that of Colossi. In front, the 
boundless sea whereon poor Berengaria of Navarre, rolling 
in the roads of Limasol, suffered such dire perplexities 
and exercised so wise a caution. Behind, the slopes of 
the grey mountains with Trooidos towering above them, 
white-capped just now with snow. To the right the 
salt lake, and immediately beneath, the town dotted 
here and there with palms. 

Just at the foot of the fortress is the Turkish quarter, 
for the most part nothing better than a collection of mud 
hovels. The population of Cyprus, it may be explained, 
is divided into Turks and pure Cypriotes. These Turks, I 
suppose, are the descendants of those members of the 
invading Ottoman army under Mustafa which conquered 
Cyprus three centuries ago, who elected to remain in the 
island as settlers. The proportion is roughly — Turks 
one-third of the population, Cypriotes two-thirds. The 
Turks, who generally live in villages by themselves, are 
going down the hill rapidly, both in numbers and wealth, 
being poor, lazy, fatalistic, and quite unfitted to cope with 
their cleverer Christian compatriots. In many instances, 
however, they are respected and respectable members 
of the community, brave in person and upright in con- 



86 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



duct. Few of them can afford more than one wife and 
as a rule their families seem small. 

The richer and more successful class of Cypriotes 
have a habit of adopting Greek names, but in fact very 
few of them are Greeks except for so much of the 
Mycenian blood as may remain in their veins. Still 
some of them intrigue against the British Government 
and affect a patriotic desire for union with Greece, that 
even the disillusionment of the Turkish war has not 
quenched. These aspirations, which, in some instances at 
any rate, are said to be not uninfluenced by the hope of 
rewards and appointments when the blessed change 
occurs, are scarcely likely to be realised. If Cyprus is 
ever handed over to any one by Great Britain, it must 
be to its nominal suzerain the Sultan, to whom the rever- 
sion belongs. But surely, after the stories of the recent 
massacres of Christians, and other events connected with 
Turkish rule, British public opinion, exercised as it is 
profoundly by the existing if half-avowed alliance be- 
tween this country and the evil system which the Sultan 
represents, could never allow of such a step. It would 
be monstrous to give back Christians into his keeping, 
and a crime to plunge Cyprus once more into the help- 
less, hopeless ruin, out of which under our just if sorely 
hampered government it is being slowly lifted. 

After inspecting Mr. Mavrogordato's stud — if that be 
the correct expression — of homing pigeons which with 
characteristic energy — not too common a quality in 
Cyprus — he is breeding* up from imported birds, we 
descended from the roof to the foundations of the castle. 
Here we visited a large vaulted place whereof the windows 
have been built up in some past age. Now, we see 
by the light of our lanterns, it is a rubbish room, and 
before that, as I imagine from several indications, under 
the Turkish regime, probably it served as a magazine for 
the storage of powder. In the old days, however, this 
place was a chapel and here it is said, upon what exact 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 87 



authority I know not, that Richard Cceur-de-Lion was 
married to Berengaria of Navarre. The only account 
of these nuptials that I can lay my hand on at this 
moment is from a contemporary chronicle of Geoffrey de 
Vinsauf or Vinosalvo. He, it will be observed, although 
writing of Limasol, or Limouzin as he calls the town, 
does not mention the church in which the wedding was 
solemnised. If there was more than one available, which 
is to be doubted, it seems most probable that the chapel 
of the fortress would have been chosen. This is what 
Geoffrey says : — 

"On the morrow, namely on the Sunday, which was the 
festival of St. Pancras, the marriage of King Richard and 
Berengaria, the daughter of the King of Navarre, was solemnised 
at Limouzin : she was a damsel of the greatest prudence and 
most accomplished manners, and there she was crowned queen. 
There were present at the ceremony the Archbishop and the 
Bishop of Evreux and the Bishop of Banera, and many other 
chiefs and nobles. The king was glorious on this happy occasion, 
and cheerful to all, and showed himself joyous and affable." 

How strange are the vicissitudes of walls ! The 
fortunes of the short-lived generations that inhabit them 
are not so variable, for these stones last longer and see 
more. What a contrast between this place in its present 
state, lumber-strewn and lit only by a few dim lamps, to 
that which it must have presented in the year 1191 when 
the warrior king, Richard, one of the most remarkable 
and attractive characters who occupy the long page of 
our English history, took to himself a wife within their 
circuit. It is not difficult, even to the dullest and least 
imaginative of the few travellers who stray to this un- 
visited -place, to reconstruct something of that pageant 
of the mighty dead. The splendid figure of the king 
himself, clad in his shirt of mail and broidered tabard 
gay with the royal arms of England. The fair bride 
glittering in her beautiful silken garments and rich adorn- 



88 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



ment of gems. The archbishop and bishops in their 
mitred pomp. The great lords and attendant knights 
arrayed in their various armour. The crowd of squires 
and servitors pressing about the door. The altar decked 
with flowers, the song of such choristers as could be 
found among the crews of the galleys — all the gathered 
splendour, rude but impressive, of perhaps the most 
picturesque age that is known to history. 

Then these great folk, thousands of miles away from 
their northern home, who had laboriously travelled hither 
exposed to the most fearful dangers by land and sea, 
enduring such privations as few common soldiers would 
now consent to bear, not to possess themselves of gold- 
mines or for any other thinly- veiled purposes of gain, but 
in the fulfilment of a great idea ! And that idea — what 
was it ? To carry out a trust which they conceived, 
wisely or in foolishness, to be laid upon them — the rescue 
of the holy places from the befouling hand of the infidel. 
Well, they are gone and their cause is lost, and the 
Moslem, supported by the realm which once they ruled, 
still squats in the Holy Land. Such is the irony of fate, 
but for my part I think that these old crusaders, and 
especially our hot-headed Richard of England, cruel 
though he was at times, as we shall see at Acre, are 
worthy of more sympathy than a practical age seems 
inclined to waste upon them. Peace to their warlike, 
superstitious souls ! 

On leaving the castle we visited an inn, in the yard 
of which stood scores of mules. It was an odoriferous but 
interesting place. Under a shed at one side of it sat 
about a dozen smiths at work, men who hire their stands 
at a yearly or monthly rent. Fixed into the ground 
before each of them — it must be remembered that these 
people sit at their work, which is all done on the cold 
iron without the help of fire — was a tiny anvil. On these 
anvils the craftsmen were employed in fashioning the 
great horseshoe nails of the country, or in cutting out 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 89 



and hammering thin, flat, iron plates which are used in 
the East for the shoeing of mules and donkeys. These 
discs that are made with only one small hole in the centre, 
must in many ways be prejudicial to the comfort and 
health of the beast, or so we should think, since they 
cause its frog to grow foul and rot away. The teachings 
of practical experience, however — for which after some 
study of such things I have great respect — seem to 
prove this kind of shoe to be best suited for use upon 
the stony tracks of the country. These plates are secured 
to the animal's hoof by six of the huge-headed nails that 
I have mentioned, and if properly fixed will last for 
several months without renewal. 

The instrument used to trim the hoof before the shoe 
is fastened, is a marvellous tool, almost of the size of a 
sickle with a flat knife attached to it as large as a child's 
spade. Probably all these implements, especially if con- 
nected in any way with agriculture, such as the wooden 
hook with an iron point which they call a plough, are 
essentially the same as those that were familiar to the 
Phoenicians and the Mycenian Greeks. In the Holy 
Land, at any rate, as we shall see later, they have not 
changed since the time of our Lord. 

That this was so as regards the shoeing of horses in 
or about the year 1430 is proved by the following passage 
which I take from the travels of Bertrandon de la 
Brocquiere of Guienne, who made a pilgrimage to 
Palestine in 1432. He says: — 

" I bought a small horse that turned out very well. Before 
my departure I had him shod in Damascus ; and thence as far 
as Bursa, which is fifty days' journey, so well do they shoe their 
horses that I had nothing to do with his feet, excepting one of 
the fore ones, which was pricked by a nail, and made him lame 
for three weeks. The shoes are light, thin, lengthened towards 
the heel, and thinner there than at the toe. They are not 
turned up, and have but four nail-holes, two on each side. The 
nails are square, with a thick and heavy head. When a shoe is 



90 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



wanted, and it is necessary to work it to make it fit the hoof, 
it is done cold, without ever putting it in the fire, which can 
readily be done because it is so thin. To pare the hoof they 
use a pruning knife, similar to what vine-dressers trim their 
vines with,|both on this as well as on the other side of the 
sea." 

This description might well apply to the shoeing of 
animals in Cyprus and Syria to-day. 

From the inn we walked to the municipal market, 
where we found many strange vegetables for sale, in- 
cluding radishes large as a full-grown carrot. Nothing 
smaller in the radish line seems to flourish here, and I 
am informed that for some occult reason it is impossible 
to intercept them in an intermediate stage of their de- 
velopment. Perhaps, like mushrooms, they spring up in 
a single night. I am grateful to these vegetables, how- 
ever, for the sight of them made clear to me the meaning 
of a passage by which I have long been worried. I 
remember reading, I forget where, in the accounts of 
one of the pyramid-building Pharaohs — Chufu, I believe 
— that he supplied tens of thousands of bunches of 
radishes daily to the hundred thousand labourers who 
were engaged upon the works. 

What puzzled me was to know how Chufu provided 
so enormous and perennial a supply of this vegetable. 
The radishes of Cyprus solve the problem. One of these 
would be quite enough for any two pyramid-builders. I 
tasted them and they struck me as stringy and flavour- 
less. Another old friend in a new form was celery tied 
in bunches, but such celery ! Not an inch of crisp white 
root about it, nothing but green and leathery head. It 
appears in this form because it has been grown upon the 
top of the ground like a cabbage. Many people have 
tried to persuade the intelligent Cypriote to earth up 
his celery, but hitherto without result. " My father 
grew the herb thus," he answers, " and I grow it as my 
father did." Doubtless the Phoenicians, ignorant of the 



A CYPRIOTE WEDDING 91 



arsenic it is said to contain, liked their celery green, or 
perhaps it was the Persians. 

Meat and game, the former marked — so advanced is 
Limasol — with the municipal stamp for octroi purposes, 
are also sold here. There on one stall next to a great pile 
of oranges, lie half-a-dozen woodcock, brown and beautiful, 
and by them a brace of French partridges now just going 
out of season, while further on is a fine hare. On the 
next, hanging to hooks, are poor little lambs with their 
throats cut, scarcely bigger than the hare, any of them ; 
and full-grown sheep, some not so large as my fat black- 
faced lambs at Easter. A little further on we came to a 
cobbler's shop, where we inspected the native boots. These 
are made of goatskin and high to the knee, with soles 
composed of many thicknesses of leather that must mea- 
sure an inch through. Cumbersome as they seem, the 
experience of centuries proves these boots to be the best 
wear possible for the inhabitants of the mountainous 
districts of this stony land. On the very day of which 
I write I saw a Cypriote arrayed in them running over 
the tumbled ruins of an ancient city and through the 
mud patches whereby it was intersected, with no more 
care or inconvenience than we should experience on a 
tennis lawn. 



CHAPTEK VIII 



AMATHUS 

Now I have to tell of Amathus, the place we passed on 
our journey down the coast, to-day a stone-strewn hill 
covered with springing corn. Even in the far past' 
Amathus was so ancient that no one knew with certainty 
of its beginnings. It is said to have been founded by 
the Phoenicians; at any rate in it flourished a temple 
to the god Melkarth, and with it a famous shrine erected 
in honour of Venus. The mythical hero, Theseus, ac- 
cording to one account, is reported to have landed here 
with Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, who died in child- 
birth in the city, although the story more generally 
accepted says that he abandoned her on the island of 
Naxos. Whatever truth there may be in all these 
legends — and probably it is but little — this is certain, 
that in its day Amathus was a great town inhabited 
by a prosperous and powerful people. It lies about five 
or six miles from Limasol and is approached by a road 
which runs along the sea, whence it is separated by a 
stretch of curious black sand which blows a good deal 
in high winds. On the way Mr. Mavrogordato pointed 
out to me an ingenious method whereby he is attempting 
to turn that barren belt into profitable soil. He seems 
to have discovered that this sand, wherein one might 
imagine nothing would grow, is suitable to the needs of 
the black wattle. At any rate the trees of that species 
which he planted there, although scarcely more than a 
year old, are now large and flourishing shrubs. 

As we drew near to Amathus I perceived curious 

92 



AMATHUS 



95 



holes by the roadside, covered in for the most part with 
rough slabs of stone. Once these holes were tombs, 
rifled long ago. Then we came to the site of the town 
stretching down to the sea-beach, where stand the rem- 
nants of a castle which we saw from the steamer. 
Now it is nothing but a hillside literally sown with 
stones that, no doubt, once formed the foundations of 
the dwellings of Amathus. I say the foundations, for I 
believe that the houses of these ancient cities, as in the 
villages of Cyprus to-day, were for the most part built 
of green brick, or what here in Norfolk we should call 
clay-lump, which in the course of centuries of sun and 
rain has melted away into the soil. The temple, public 
buildings, and palaces must have been magnificent, and 
as I shall show presently, wonderful care was lavished 
upon the tombs : but the habitations of the great mass 
of the citizens were in all likelihood humble and tem- 
porary structures, or so I think. It is the same in 
Egypt, where the old inhabitants grudged neither wealth 
nor labour in the preparation of graves, their everlasting 
abode, but were content to fashion their earthly lodgings 
of the Nile mud that lay at hand. 

Amathus must have been very strong, indeed it 
would be difficult to find a site better suited to defence. 
It is surrounded by steep natural ravines which served 
the purpose of moats, and surmounted by a towering 
rock with precipitous sides, along whose slopes the city 
lay. Upon this rock, says tradition, stood an impregnable 
citadel ; indeed the site is still called " The Old Castle " 
by the peasants of the neighbouring village of Agia 
Tychenos. Now all these countless stones furnish their 
humble tillers with a seed-bed for wheat and barley. 
The inexperienced might imagine that no place could 
be more unsuitable for the growing of crops, but in fact 
this is not so, seeing that in the severe Cyprian droughts 
stones have the property of retaining moisture to nurture 
the roots which otherwise would perish. 



94 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



On arriving at the foot of the hill we rode round it 
to visit the tombs which lie behind and beyond, taking 
with us a supply of candles and several peasants as 
guides. These sepulchres were, I believe, discovered 
and plundered more than twenty years ago by General 
Cesnola, the consul, whose splendid collection of anti- 
quities is to be seen in America. The first we reached lay 
at the bottom of a deep pit now rapidly refilling with silt 
washed into it by the winter wet. In the surrounding 
rubbish we could still see traces of its violation, for here 
lay many fragments of ancient amphorse and of a shat- 
tered marble sarcophagus. After the rains that had 
fallen recently the path through the hole leading into 
the tomb was nothing but a pool of liquid mud through 
which, to win an entrance, the explorer must crawl upon 
his stomach, as the soil rises to within about eighteen 
inches of the top blocks of its square doorway. The task 
seemed dirty and in every way unpleasing, but I for one 
did not travel to Cyprus to be baffled by common, harm- 
less mud. So I took off my coat, which in the scant state 
of our wardrobe I did not care to spoil, and went at it, 
on my hands and toes, that the rest of me might avoid 
the slush as much as possible. 

It was a slimy and a darksome wriggle, but quite 
safe, in this respect differing somewhat from a journey 
of a like nature which I made a good many years ago. 
That was near Assouan in Egypt, where at the time 
certain new tombs had just been discovered which I was 
anxious to explore. These tombs were hollowed in the 
rock at the top of a steep slope of sand, which choked 
their doorways. Seeing that, as at Amathus, there was 
just sufficient space left beneath the head of the door- 
way of one of them for a man of moderate size to creep 
through, I made the attempt alone. Writhing forward, 
serpent-wise, through the sand, presently I found myself 
in the very grimmest place that I have ever visited. It 
was a cave of the size of a large room, and when my eyes 



AMATHUS 



95 



grew accustomed to the faint light which crept through 
the hole, I saw that it was literally full of dead, so full 
that their bodies must once have risen almost to the 
roof. Moreover these dead had not been embalmed, for 
round me lay their clean bones by hundreds and their 
skulls by scores. Yet once this sepulchre was at the 
service of older and more distinguished occupants, as 
under the skeletons I found a broken mummy-case of 
good workmanship, and in it the body of a woman whose 
wrappings had decayed. She died young, since at the 
time of her decease she was just cutting her wisdom 
teeth. 

As I wondered over these jumbled relics of the 
departed, I remembered having read that about the 
time of Christ, Assouan was smitten with a fearful 
plague which slew its inhabitants by thousands. Doubt- 
less, I thought, here are the inhabitants, or some of 
them, whose bodies in such a time of pestilence it would 
have been impossible to embalm. So they must have 
brought and piled them one on another in the caves that 
had served as sepulchres of the richer notables among 
their forefathers, till all were full. I remembered also 
that plague germs are said to be singularly long-lived 
and that these might be getting hungry. With that 
thought I brought my examination of this interesting 
place to a sudden end. 

Just as I was beginning my outward crawl, foolishly 
enough I shouted loudly to my companion whom I had 
left at the entrance of another sepulchre, thinking that 
he might help to pull me through the hole. Almost 
immediately afterwards I felt something weighty begin 
to trickle on to my back with an ever-increasing stream 
and in a flash understood that the reverberations of my 
voice had loosened the over-hanging stones already shaken 
and shattered by earthquakes, and that the sand was 
pouring down upon me from between them. Heavens ! 
how frightened I was. Luckily one does not argue under 



96 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



such circumstances where, indeed, he who hesitates is 
lost. If I had stopped to think whether it would be 
best to go back or to go forward, to go quick or go slow, 
it is very probable that long since I should have added 
an alien cranium to those of that various pile. Instead 
I crawled forward more swiftly than ever I crawled 
before, notwithstanding the increasing weight upon my 
back, for the sand fell faster and faster, with the result 
that as no stone followed it to crush me, presently, some- 
what exhausted, I was sitting fanning myself with a 
grateful heart in the dazzling sun without. 

To return to Amathus and a still older tomb : this 
doorway beneath which we passed was also square and 
surmounted by four separate mouldings. Once through 
it, we lighted our candles to find ourselves standing in a 
kind of chapel, where I suppose the relatives of the dead 
assembled at funerals or to make offerings on the 
anniversaries of death. Out of this chapel opened four 
tombs, each of them large enough to contain several 
bodies. They are empty now, but their beautiful work- 
manship is left for us to admire. Thousands of years 
ago — though to look at them one might think it yester- 
day — the hard limestone blocks of which they are built 
were laid with a trueness and finish that is quite ex- 
quisite. Clearly no scamped work was allowed in old 
Phoenician tombs. In these graves and others close at 
hand, General Cesnola found many antiques of value. 
Indeed one of our guides, who was employed to dig for 
him, assisted at their ransack. 

Some readers may remember a violent controversy 
which arose among the learned over the allegation that 
Cesnola unearthed the most of his more valuable antiquities 
in a single treasury at Curium. The said antiquities, how- 
ever, being, so the critics declared, of many different styles 
and periods, it was found difficult to understand how they 
could have been discovered in one place, unless indeed 
Curium boasted a prehistoric British Museum with a gold- 



AMATHUS 



97 



room attached. Here I may say that a few days later I 
visited Curium in the company of official gentlemen, who 
informed me that they were present when excavations were 
made with the object of investigating these statements. 
The statements, they said, were not proved. 

Bearing this dispute in mind, I asked the Cypriote 
guide whether General Cesnola found his most important 
objects heaped in one place at Curium. He answered 
that antiquities were found here and there ; that often 
Cesnola himself was not present when they were found, 
but that as they were dug up from the tombs they were 
collected by the workmen and taken care of, to be given 
over to him whenever he might come. I quote this bit 
of evidence for what it is worth, as in future generations, 
when all these burial-places have been thoroughly ran- 
sacked, the matter may become of interest because of 
the side-light which it throws upon ancient history. 

Much of our knowledge of the remote past is derived 
from tombs, and yet to my mind our pleasing habit of 
violating the dead, whether for purposes of gain or in 
order to satisfy our thirst for information, is not alto- 
gether easy to justify. It is a very ancient habit. 
Because of it the mummies of Rameses, the Pharaoh of 
the Oppression, of the wondrous-faced Seti, his father, 
of the monarchs of, I think, the Her-hor dynasty, and 
a host of others, about the period of the Persian invasion 
were moved from their immemorial resting-places to the 
hiding hole of Deir-el-Bahari. Long before this indeed 
the rulers of Egypt, knowing the danger, were in the 
habit, at intervals of several hundred years, of despatching 
royal commissioners to inspect the bodies of the great de- 
parted and ascertain that they slept safe and undisturbed. 
I myself have seen writings upon the outer wrappings 
of the deceased which notified that such and such a 
commission inspected the corpse of such and such a divine 
king — he who lay within the wrappings — now " sleeping 
in Osiris," and found his coffins and corpse intact. 



98 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



In this particular instance the efforts of the ancient 
Egyptians to preserve the earthly remnants of those who 
ruled over them thousands of years before, did but 
postpone the evil day. Tens of generations went by, and 
in a fashion interesting enough but too long to describe 
here, the hiding-place of Deir-el-Bahari was discovered. 
Modern savants hurried to the place — one of them told 
me not long afterwards that he nearly fainted with joy 
when by the light of candles held above his head, he 
discovered the richness of that hoard. Up the deep and 
narrow well were dragged the corpses of kings and queens 
as great in their own time as Victoria or Napoleon. As 
they were borne to the steamer the fellaheen women, in- 
spired by some spirit of hereditary veneration, ran along 
the banks of Nile weeping, tearing their hair and throwing 
dust upon their heads because the ancient lords of their 
land were being taken away and none knew where they 
would lay them. Now rent from their wrappings, their 
half-naked bodies lie in the glass cases of a museum to be 
stared at by every tourist. The face before whose frown 
whole nations trembled and mayhap Joseph or Moses 
bowed the knee, is an object for the common jest of the 
vulgar, and so will remain until within a few decades or 
centuries it is burnt in a conflagration, or torn to pieces 
by a drunken rabble, or perchance — happier destiny — 
crumbled into dust as must happen soon or late, to be 
thrown out upon the dung-heap for hens to scratch at. 

Is it right ? I ask who have been a sinner. Myself 
in the neighbourhood of Abydos, to take one example 
out of several whereof the recollections to-day fill me 
with some remorse, I found the mummy of a child. 
She was a little girl, who, poor dear, had lived and died 
in the first centuries of the Christian era, of Greek 
parentage, probably, for her skin was exceeding white. 
She lay wrapped in coloured bandages, not unlike some 
of the cottons which are manufactured to-day, and on 
a piece of mummy cloth which covered them, her 



AMATHUS 



99 



parents had drawn a cross in red pigment and scrawled 
beneath it in Greek characters the word " Christos." 

I hold that holy rag in my hand as I write and it 
shames me that I do so, but if I had not taken it the 
Arabs who were with me and who showed me the hiding- 
place, would have sold it to the next traveller. I 
remember that on the same journey we unwrapped the 
head of a mummy purchased from some tomb-breaker 
for a few piastres. Oh ! what a face appeared ! That 
man who had lived four thousand years ago might have 
been a king, or a high-priest, so majestic were his withered 
features. Certainly his blood must have been noble and 
his place high. Yet his end was that a doctor sawed his 
skull open to see how it was embalmed. May he forgive 
me for the part I took in that business, who then was 
younger and more thoughtless. 

At the time perhaps I did not understand quite as well 
as I do now — I mention this in my excuse — how sincere 
and solemn was the belief which among the old Egyptians 
led to this practice of embalming. Of all people who 
have ever lived, not even excluding those of our Chris- 
tian faith, they held most firmly to the doctrine of the 
resurrection of the body. Therefore they preserved that 
body against the hour of its awakening, and the idea 
of its disturbance, or destruction, was to them horrible. 
It was a futile faith, as they themselves recognised, since 
knowing that no efforts of their own could guard against 
future events — such as the arrival of the Nile tourist — 
they multiplied images and pictures of the deceased, 
hoping that some one of them might survive for the Ka 
or Double to haunt, and the Khu, or Spirit, to reanimate 
at the appointed season. Piteous and idle plan, since 
dust must to dust, be it soon or late. Still their faith 
may fulfil itself in other ways, and we may venture to 
believe that at the last the Spirit they were so sure of 
will not be left without its tabernacle. 

Yet is our offence as great, although with a strange 



L.ofC. 



100 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



and gross materialism we suppose, when we consider the 
matter at all, that the fact of these folk having died so 
long ago makes them fair prey for our greed or curiosity. 
But what is time to the dead ? Ten million ages and a 
nap after dinner, unconsciousness can know no differ- 
ence — to consciousness refound they must be one. On 
awakening in each case the recollections would be as 
vivid, the aspirations, the motives, the thoughts, the 
beliefs, the sorrows, hopes and terrors as firm and dis- 
tinct. Once the senses are shut, time ceases to exist, if 
in truth it exists at all. Then is the offence of the 
violation of this hallowed dust so carefully hid away, 
any the less because it has slept five thousand years, 
than it would be in the case of a resurrection man 
who drags it from the grave it has occupied six hours, to 
sell it to the dissecting-table ? We are so apt to judge 
of the dead by a standard of the possible feelings of 
the survivors, forgetting that they may have their own 
feelings. Also the survivors, or rather the departed 
contemporaries, may still be shocked. 

These poor Phoenicians of Amathus had no such high 
hopes, although from time to time there were plenty in 
Cyprus who shared them. Yet they built their sepulchres 
with extraordinary expense and care, facing towards the 
sea as though they wished to watch the sun rise and set 
for ever. We break into them under the written order 
of the British Museum, or secretly by night, and drag 
their ear-rings from their ears, and their rings from their 
fingers, and set their staring skulls upon back shelves 
in dealers' dens in Limasol where once they ruled, to 
be sold for a shilling — skulls are cheap to-day — to the 
first relic-hunting traveller. Well, so it is and so it 
will ever be. 

The next tomb we came to had a beautiful V-shaped 
doorway, though only the top of the inverted V was 
visible above the rubbish. I did not go in here, being 
already sufficiently plastered with mud, almost from head 



AMATHUS 



101 



to foot indeed, but my companion, who is young and 
active, achieved the adventure. As it turned out it 
might very easily have been his last, for in climbing up 
the walls of the pit again, his foot slipped on a little 
piece of greasy earth and down he went backwards, drag- 
ging two Cypriotes with him in such fashion that all three 
of them lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of the hole. 
The sight was ludicrous enough, but as the older of 
the two guides explained to us, had it not been for his 
quickness and address my nephew would certainly have 
met with a serious accident. The man saw from the 
way he was falling that his head or neck must strike 
against a stone at the bottom of the pit, and managed to 
thrust his arm and thick sleeve between the two. Once 
my own life was saved in a very similar fashion, except 
that no human agency intervened. I was galloping a 
pony along an African road when suddenly it crossed its 
legs and went down as though it had been shot. In 
falling my head struck a stone on the road with great 
force, but by chance the thick cloth hat which I was 
wearing, being jerked from its place, interposed itself as 
a kind of doubled-up cushion between my temple and 
the stone, with the result that I escaped with slight 
concussion. I remember that the shock of the fall 
was so great that my stout buckskin braces were burst 
into four pieces. 

That my nephew's danger was not exaggerated by the 
Cypriote is shown by the fact that, within the last few 
years, at the mouth of this or the very next tomb a German 
professor was killed in precisely the same way. Indeed, 
now that I think of it, I remember reading of his sad 
death in a paper. The poor gentleman, who was accom- 
panied only by an old woman, having finished his inspection 
began to climb up the sides of the pit when a stone came 
out in his hand and he fell head first to the bottom. 
He only lived about five minutes and our friend, the 
protecting Cypriote, helped to carry away his body. 



102 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



After this experience, having had enough of the in- 
teresting but dirty pursuit of " tombing," we mounted 
our mules and rode round the hill of the ancient city, a 
stone-strewn and somewhat awkward path. The streets 
there must have been very steep in their day and a walk 
up to the citadel on business, or to buy a slave or two 
kidnapped on the shores of Britain as a special line for 
the Cyprian market, excellent exercise for the fat old 
wine-bibbing merchants, whose scattered bones and 
broken drinking-cups we had just been handling yonder 
among the tombs. 

Now the place is melancholy in its desolation. There 
is nothing left, nothing. It might have formed the text 
of one of Isaiah's prophecies, so swept of life is it and of 
all outward memorials of life. I could only find one 
remnant. On the face of a towering rock we discovered a 
short uncial Greek inscription which is beginning to feel 
the effects of weather. Our united scholarship pieced 
this much out of it : "Lucius Vitellius, the great conqueror, 
erected this from his own." Here the information comes 
to a full stop, for we could not make out any more. 
Perhaps some reader of this page may know with cer- 
tainty which Lucius Vitellius is referred to and why he was 
engaged in conquering at Amathus. Is it perchance Lucius 
Vitellius, the father of the emperor who was governor in 
Syria, in a.d. 34 ? If so he might well have described 
himself as " the great humbug " instead of the great 
conqueror, as is proved by the famous story that is 
told of him concerning Caligula and the moon. Accord- 
ing to Tacitus, however, he was a good governor. " I am 
not ignorant that he had a bad name in Rome and that 
many scandalous things were said of him, but in the 
administration of the provinces he showed the virtues of 
an earlier age." 

I daresay that yonder crumbling screed may be 
the only actual monument that is left to-day of this 
Vitellius, his pomp, his cunning, and his flattery. 



AMATHUS 



108 



As we returned home the scene was very beautiful. 
In the west the sun sank gorgeously, his fan-like arrows 
breaking and reflecting themselves from the dense purple 
under-clouds that had gathered and lay low upon the 
horizon of the slumbering deep. High above in the 
fathomless blue spaces of the Cyprian heavens, rode the 
great moon, now rounding to her full, her bright face 
marked with mountain scars. And the lights that lay 
on sea, sky and land, on the plain of Limasol and the 
mount of ruined Amathus, who shall describe them — 
those changeful, many-coloured lights, so delicate, so 
various and so solemn ? 

On the day after our visit to Amathus I attended 
the Court-house to listen to the magisterial examination 
of the men (whose numbers had now increased to six) 
whom I had seen previously in jail awaiting their trial 
upon a charge of murder. The court was crowded with 
the relatives of the accused ; zaptiehs, or policemen ; a 
selection of idlers from among the general public; a 
goodly number of Greek advocates crowded together 
in the front bench, and the six prisoners themselves all 
squeezed into a dock which was much too small for 
them, where they stood in a double row listening to 
the evidence with an indifferent air, real or affected. 
For the rest Mr. Mavrogordato, as I am told a veritable 
terror to evildoers, conducted the case for the prosecution, 
bringing out his points with great clearness, while the 
district judge, Mr. Parker, sat as a magistrate's court. 
The judicial functions of the legal officials in Cyprus 
are by the way rather curiously mixed, the same indi- 
vidual being able, apparently, to sit in varying executory 
capacities. 

The case was opened by the different advocates 
announcing for which of the prisoners they appeared. 
Then Mr. Mavrogordato took up his parable and began 
to examine the Greek doctor through an interpreter, 
whose somewhat lengthy translations made the proceed- 



104 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



ings rather slow. When, after a couple of hours, we had 
just got to the point where he turned the body over, 
growing weary I went home to lunch. To this hour I 
cannot say whether or no those reputed murderers, or if 
any, which of them, still adorn the land of life, or whether 
under Mr. Mavrogordato's guidance, they have passed 
beneath that black beam which spans the central well in 
the old castle at Limasol. I think very possibly, how- 
ever, that they were all acquitted or reprieved, for 
although I am certain that they, or some of them, did 
the deed, from the opening of the case, out of the depths 
of a not inconsiderable experience of such inquiries, I 
am convinced that every ounce of the evidence in 
possession of the prosecution was absolutely and solely 
circumstantial. Moreover, although they had dug him 
up again and looked for it, the missing knife-point 
could not be found in the vitals of the late-lamented 
cattle-poisoning rascal whom somebody had slain. A 
broken and recovered knife -point goes a long way 
with a jury, and its absence is equally favourable to 
the prisoner. 

One afternoon I attended some athletic sports at 
Limasol. It was a general feast-day, in honour of what 
or of whom I grieve to say I forget, but on that occasion 
there were festivities everywhere. Earlier in the day I 
went for a ride to a village some miles distant which 
also was celebrating sports, that is to say a few loungers 
were gathered together about an open place in the hamlet, 
and nobody was doing any work. This I noticed, how- 
ever, both in the village aforesaid, on the ground at 
Limasol, and from the spires of all the churches that I 
could see, a flag was flying. As it was a public holiday 
one might have expected that this flag would be English, 
or perhaps here and there, in deference to ancient and 
long-established custom, Ottoman. It was neither, it was 
Greek. Everywhere that not very attractive banner 
flaunted in the wind. I asked the reason but nobody 



AMATHUS 



105 



seemed to know an answer. They suggested, however, 
that it had something to do with the Greek churches, 
and added that the upper classes of the Cypriotes who 
call themselves, but are not, Greeks, always flew the 
Greek flag. 

I submit that this is not a good thing. Throughout 
the world and at all periods of its history the flag flown 
is the symbol of the authority acknowledged, or that the 
population wish to acknowledge. In Cyprus of course 
the bulk of the inhabitants are not concerned in this 
matter. The villagers of the remote hills and plains care 
little about banners, but if they see continually that of 
Greece displayed on every church tower and high place, 
and never, or rarely, that of Great Britain which rules 
them, they may, not unnaturally, draw their own con- 
clusions. It is a small affair perhaps, but one, I believe, 
which might with advantage be attended to by the Govern- 
ment. Eastern peoples do not understand our system of 
laissez /aire where the symbols of authority are concerned, 
and are apt to argue that we are afraid to show the 
colours which we do not fly. The Union Jack is not a 
banner that should be hidden away in British territory. 
Nor is this my own view only. It is shared by every 
unofficial Englishman in Cyprus, though these are few. 
Officials may have their opinions also, but it would not be 
fair to quote them. 

After the sports were over I had an interesting conver- 
sation with a gentleman well acquainted with the customs 
of the country. He told me that few traces of the old 
Phoenician rites remain, except that which is still cele- 
brated in some districts upon Whitsunday. Then, as 
did their forefathers thousands of years since, the villagers 
go down to the sea and bathe there, both sexes together. 
It is the ancient welcome given to Venus in the island 
fabled to be her chosen home, mixed up perhaps with 
some Christian ceremony of washing and regeneration. 
The bathers throw water over each other, but so far as 



106 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



outward appearances go, there is nothing incorrect in their 
conduct at these quaint and primitive celebrations. 

My friend told me also, to turn to another subject, 
of the vast benefit which the British Government has 
conferred upon the island by the practical extermination 
of the locust. All the ancient visitors to Cyprus, or at 
least many of them, speak of this curse, which twenty 
years ago, and even on the occasion of my last visit, was 
in full operation. An ingenious Greek gentleman devised 
the remedy. Roughly the system is this. Locusts, im- 
pelled thereto by one of those wondrous instincts that 
continually amaze the student of nature, at the appointed 
season select certain lands wherein to lay their eggs, 
which must not be too deep or too shallow, and when 
the pests begin to grow must furnish certain food on 
the surface of the sandy soil necessary to their support. 
Observation soon enables skilled persons to discover these 
spots. Then the system first invented by Mr. Mattei 
and perfected by my late friend, Mr. Samuel Brown, is 
brought into operation. 

Briefly it consists of the erection of screens of canvas 
many yards in length edged at the top with shiny 
American cloth, in front of which screens are dug deep 
trenches. About a fortnight after the locusts are hatched 
out of the egg, having exhausted the supply at the breed- 
ing-place, they begin their march across country in search 
of nutriment. Then it is that strange things happen to 
them, for climbing up the canvas screens which they 
find barring their path, their feet slip upon the leather 
and down they slide backwards into the ready-made 
grave beneath. Before they can crawl up again others 
tumble on the top of them, and so it goes on till the 
trench is full. Now observant human beings arrive, 
cover it in to prevent effluvium and move the screen a 
few yards further on to another trench that they have 
prepared, where this page of locust-history repeats itself. 
It might be thought that learning wisdom — from his 



AMATHUS 



107 



fellows' fate — the locust would in time educate himself 
to go round the screen. But not so, for of all this 
insect's characteristics obstinacy is the most prominent. 
He means to travel a certain path ; if it involves his 
death, so much the worse, at least he will travel till he 
dies. Doubtless it is this singleness of purpose, this in- 
capability of changing his mind, that makes the locust 
so great and formidable. 

And formidable he is, or was, as any one will know 
who has ever seen a stretch of growing corn, or a grove 
of fruit-trees, or any green thing that is of service to 
man, over which the locust has passed. Joel the prophet 
knew him long ago, before ever Messrs. Mattei and Brown 
had at last taught humanity how to beat him (i.e. in an 
island like Cyprus). " He hath laid my vine waste and 
barked my fig-tree : he hath made it clean bare, and cast 
it away ; the branches thereof are made white. . . . How 
do the beasts groan ! the herds of cattle are perplexed, 
because they have no pasture : yea, the flocks of sheep are 
made desolate." And again — here he describes them at 
their work. Could it be more wonderfully done, could 
any words give a more vivid picture of the overwhelming 
invasion of this bane and the waste it leaves behind ? 

* A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a 
flame burneth : the land is as the garden of Eden before 
them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and 
nothing shall escape them. . . . Like the noise of chariots 
on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of 
a flame that devoureth the stubble." 

Such indeed is the sound that has been heard to rise 
from the millions of their moving jaws. 

However, as I have said, thanks to the continued 
exertions of the Government, locusts are now practically 
exterminated in Cyprus. 

What their ravages have been in the island for ages 
past may be gathered from a single quotation which I take 
from the writings of Benedetto Bordone, the geographer, 



108 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of Padua, whose work was published in 1528. It is only 
one example, but it will serve : — 

"But among so much ? good, that there may be nothing in 
this world without its bitterness, the luck of the island has this 
one drawback, mingling with its blessings so heavy a curse that 
men can hardly bear up against it — that a vast multitude of 
cavalette or locusts appear with the young wheat : these as they 
pass from place to place are so many in number that like a thick 
cloud they hide the sun : and where they light they devour and 
consume not only the grain and grass, but even the roots below 
ground, so that one might say that fire had blasted everything. 
Yet they use all diligence to destroy these insects, and make a 
very great outlay to seek out the eggs while they are in the 
earth, and they do indeed in some years find of them thirty 
thousand bushels. Besides this they use yet another remedy of 
a strange kind ; they send to Syria to fetch a certain water, 
with which they soak the ground, and where it is thus soaked 
the eggs burst and produce none of these insects." 

What water was this, I wonder ? 



CHAPTER IX 



CURIUM 

Charming as is Cyprus in many ways, it is a place where 
the traveller, especially the English traveller, and still 
more the unofficial dweller in the land, has some reason 
to congratulate himself if he was born with the gifts of 
patience and humility. In practice the island is inhabited 
by two classes only, the Government officials and the 
native Cypriotes. Between these there is a great gulf fixed, 
in itself a bad thing as I think, since it is not good for 
any man, or body of men, to be continually surrounded 
by people whom they consider very much their inferiors. 
In Africa I have known weak folk driven crazy by this 
plethora of authority, and nine individuals out of ten it 
makes conceited. Only really large-minded men can 
bear the weight of unquestioned power and remain un- 
spoiled, men big enough to know how frail and small 
the rest of us are. 

To return — wide as that gulf may be, it is not 
altogether easy to float there. In other words, an in- 
habitant who is not an official has no " position " in 
Cyprus, and is collectively relegated to a class by him- 
self, or so it seemed to me. It is, however, very much 
to be regretted that this class is not larger. In that 
event not only would life become less narrow in the 
island, for red tape in quantity does constrict the intellect ; 
its rulers also would be exposed to the tonic and stimulus 
of competent and independent public opinion. At present 
of factious opposition to the Government from the Greek 
party and others there is plenty, of intelligent and sug- 

109 



110 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



gestive criticism at the hands of equals and compatriots, 
little or none at all. 

The questions of social status and precedence do 
not affect the traveller, however, though if he be of 
an observant mind they may amuse him. What does 
affect him are the hide-bound Cyprian regulations. One 
I have mentioned, and its inconveniences — that having 
to do with revolvers — but it is as nothing compared to 
those which overtake the individual who ventures to 
come to Cyprus armed with a fowling-piece in the hope 
of shooting duck or woodcock. I, unfortunate, had sent 
mine on, and finding it awaiting me at the custom-house 
at Limasol, suggested that I might take it away. Thereon 
I was informed very politely that I must comply with a 
few formalities. First, it proved imperative that I should 
obtain from the Government at Nicosia a certificate that 
I was a fit and proper person to be allowed to carry 
so dangerous a weapon as a shot-gun. Secondly, a value 
must be set upon the said gun which must be approved. 
Thirdly, the fourth part of the value thus ascertained 
must be paid over in cash to the custom-house officer, 
who, on the owner quitting the island within a certain 
period of time and satisfying him that he had not 
disposed of the gun, would repay three-quarters of the 
total amount so deposited, the Government retaining the 
rest for its trouble. Fourthly, a game-licence must be 
taken out. This I think an excellent regulation. 

It can easily be imagined that by the time I had 
written the necessary letters, signed the necessary 
documents, paid the necessary deposit and interviewed 
the necessary number of officers, I wished almost that 
I had thrown my gun into the sea before I was foolish 
enough to bring it to Cyprus. Even now when the 
trouble is done with, I venture to ask whether all these 
formalities are really needful in the case of a person 
known to be a bond-fide traveller who proposes to tarry 
for a few weeks only in the land ? The same question 



CURIUM 



111 



might be asked of other Cyprian regulations and of their 
method of enforcement. 

A more serious matter, as I myself experienced, 
for which indeed the Government is not responsible, 
although I think it might take action to prevent the 
inconvenience, is connected with the Turkish telegraph 
line which purports to deliver messages in Cyprus. 
What happens, and has happened perpetually for the 
last year or so since the cable was hopelessly broken, 
and intermittently before that time, is that a message 
taken by the Turkish line, without warning or other 
enlightenment to the sender in whatever part of the 
world he may be, passes over their wires to Port Said 
or Beyrout, where it is left to lie until a ship is sailing. 
Thence it is sent on by post and re-telegraphed from 
Larnaca to its address by the Eastern Telegraph 
Company, for which service is charged a fee of one 
and ninepence. 

In my case I despatched a cable to Italy, by the 
Eastern Telegraph Company, to which I had previously 
arranged to receive an immediate reply. No answer came 
and I grew anxious. Days passed and finally the reply 
did come, a week late, having been forwarded by post from 
Port Said ! My hostess informed me that within a single 
year the same thing had happened no less than thrice to 
people staying in her house. For a specimen result I 
quote an instance that occurred just before I arrived. 
The father of a lady who was staying with a friend in 
the island, died in England, and the sad news was at once 
telegraphed to her. This message was sent by the 
Turkish wires with the shocking result that the person 
concerned first learned of her bereavement through a 
casual perusal of the advertisement columns of the Times. 
The cable itself was delivered a day or two later than 
the newspaper. 

It would seem that the Government might move 
to put a stop to this constant and intolerable scandal 



112 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of a telegraph line accepting and being paid for messages 
which it has neither the intention nor the means of 
delivering. I am informed, however, that it does not do 
so because such action might raise " a political question " 
and give offence to the Turks. If I were in a position 
of authority I think that I should take the risk of that 
offence and of the use of a little plain language. 

Still notwithstanding these and other drawbacks, 
unavoidable perhaps in a country soaked with oriental 
traditions, Cyprus is in many ways a most delightful 
spot, and it is remarkable that more English people do 
not live there, at least for the winter season. Actual 
residence in the island to all but those inured to heat, 
involves a three months' stay in summer under canvas 
or in huts on the mountain heights of Trooidos, whither 
the officials move annually from Nicosia. This is a 
sojourn that must become monotonous in spite of the 
delightful air and scenery of the pine forests, since 
lawn-tennis parties and picnics, where the guests are 
continually the same, will pall at last on all except the 
youngest and most enthusiastic. For the other nine 
months of the year, or most of them, the climate is 
pleasant and healthy. 

I know that in the last respect, it has a different 
reputation ; arising I believe from the fact, that when 
it was first acquired from the Turks, some regiments 
of debilitated troops were sent from Egypt to recover 
health in Cyprus. Those in authority proceeded to 
secure this object through the great heats of summer 
by setting them down in overcrowded tents upon an 
undrained marsh, where they sickened and died in con- 
siderable numbers. Also in old days the island's re- 
putation for wholesomeness was of the most evil. 

I have discovered many references to this in the course 
of my reading, but lack the time to search them out 
now ; also to do so would be to overburden these pages. 
Here are one or two extracts, however, upon which I am 



CURIUM 



113 



able to lay hands, that will suffice to prove the point. 
They are taken, for the most part, from Uxcerpta Cypria. 
Felix Fabri writing in the fifteenth century says that on 
returning from a certain expedition inland in Cyprus — 

" When we reached the sea in our galley we found that two 
pilgrims were dead, one of whom was a priest of the Minorite 
order, a brave and learned man, and the other was a tailor from 
Picardy, an honest and good man. Several others were in the 
death agony. We, too, who had come from Nicosia, cast our- 
selves down on our beds very sick ; and the number of the sick 
became so great, that there was now no one to wait upon them 
and furnish them with necessaries." 

He goes on to tell how they put out to sea and met with 
sad adventures : — 

" During this time one of the knights ended his days most 
piteously. We wound a sheet about him, weighted his body with 
stones, and with weeping cast him into the sea. On the third 
day from this another knight, who had gone out of his mind, 
expired in great pain and with terrible screams," and so forth. 

Again Egidius van Egmont, and John Heyman, 
whose work was translated from the Dutch in London 
in 1759, say : — 

"It is known by experience that the inhabitants of this 
island seldom attain to any great age, owing possibly to the 
badness of the air; malignant fevers being common here, 
especially towards the end of summer, and during our stay in 
the island, though it was in the spring, a contagious distemper 
swept away great numbers at Nicosia. But the air is most 
noxious at Famagusta and Lernaca owing to the vapours rising 
from the fens and saltpans in the neighbourhood. And at 
Lernaca the air is most unhealthy when the sun is above the 
horizon." 

Also Richard Pococke, whose well-known work was 
published in London in 1743, writes : — 

" These mountains and the shallow soil, which is mostly on 
a white free-stone, make it excessively hot in summer and the 



134 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



island is very unhealthy especially to strangers, who often get 
fevers here, which either carry them off, or at least continue for 
a considerable time, the disorder lurking in the blood and occa- 
sioning frequent relapses." 

To come to quite recent times Monsieur Delaroiere, 
whose book, Voyage en Orient, was published in 1836, 
talking of Larnaca says : — 

" We went out to this shrine, which is charmingly situated 
near a great lake and wooded hills, but the air is very unwhole- 
some. In a visit we paid to the sheik we saw the insalubrity of 
the place stamped on every face ; the pale and leaden com- 
plexions testified to habitual fever." 

These short quotations, which could be easily supple- 
mented by others of like tenor, suffice to show that the 
healthiness of Cyprus has always been in bad repute. 
Why this is so I cannot say, for, given the most ordinary 
precautions, among warm countries it is certainly the 
most wholesome that I have visited. I have scarcely 
heard of a death that could in any way be attributed to 
climate among the European officials, and children of 
northern blood seem to nourish there. Probably its 
reputation may be set down to the lack of those ordinary 
precautions and the insanitary condition of the place 
in the past. Few people whose reading has not been 
more or less extensive know the extent of the mortality 
throughout all lands in bygone generations. A great pro- 
portion of the death rate everywhere was, I am convinced, 
due to typhoid which nobody knew how to treat or how 
to avoid. It had not even any specific name except the 
generic term of " feaver." For proof of this such works 
as the Verney Memoirs may be consulted. It is probable 
that a traveller from Cyprus visiting London about the 
year 1600 might have returned and described the city 
as most unwholesome. 

Living in Cyprus is extraordinarily cheap. A family 
can nourish there and have many comforts, such as 



CURIUM 



115 



riding-horses, &e., who at home would be obliged to look 
twice at a bus fare and consider a visit to the pit of a 
theatre a great luxury. Servants also are inexpensive 
and, on the whole, might be a great deal worse. One in 
a house where I received hospitality was really a very 
good, all-round man. He went by the name of Cristo 
or Christ, an appellation common enough in Cyprus, 
though one from the use of which northern people would 
refrain. There was a boy also, an amusing young rascal, 
who when taken into service evidently was half starved. 
Then he made up for it, for to my own knowledge he 
could devour a large tin of bad potted lobster with 
appetite and without ill effects ; nor did he shrink from 
swallowing at a draught a whole tureen of mint-sauce. 
On such diet he grew wondrous fat. 

In Cyprus everybody depends upon the sun, which is 
presumed to be, but is not, always on show, at any rate 
in the winter months. Fireplaces in the dwelling-rooms 
are a luxury introduced by the English, pleasant enough 
and even needful in January and February. When the 
sun refuses to shine inconveniences ensue. Thus the 
washing generally comes home wet and I could discover 
but one means of airing it — to place the garments which 
it was proposed to wear on the following day in bed and 
sleep upon them. This receipt I frequently adopted. 
Old travellers will know the plan and young ones may 
note the same. 

Fourteen years or so ago when I was there, Cyprus 
was a very happy hunting ground for the lovers of 
antiquities. Then many desirable things could still 
be purchased. For instance there were objects of silver 
that I suppose must be of mediaeval date, or a little 
later; worked buckles that were worn by the inhabit- 
ants on great occasions, round or shell- shaped and very 
beautiful, of which in those days I obtained several pairs. 
Also there were curious reliquaries to be worn about the 
neck, generally fashioned in the form of a hollow cross, 



116 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



inside of which was placed a bit of saint or some other 
sacred scrap. Now few such objects are to be found. 
Nearly all have vanished. I searched the bazaar at 
Nicosia and every likely place in the other towns, without 
discovering even a single pair of buckles. I could find 
nothing except one small reliquary. Veritable antiquities 
are almost as rare to-day, owing largely to the prohibition 
that has been put upon private digging in the interests 
of the British Museum. 

On my first visit I was rather fortunate. Thus in a 
village not far from Cyrenia I bought for a small sum 
from the man who dug it up, a beautifully worked 
oriental bowl of bronze, dating, I should think, from the 
fifteenth or sixteenth century. In this bowl the finder 
discovered coins which he sold for the sum of three 
hundred pounds, their value by weight. What coins 
they were I cannot say, for he had parted with every 
one and could give no clear description of them. 

Also I obtained from him a piece of glass which he 
had found, that at once struck me as very curious. It 
is about six inches high, round, with a narrow neck, and 
its great peculiarity lies in the fact that it has five spirals 
of glass that spring from near the bottom of the bowl, 
clearing its arch to join the vessel again at the root of 
its neck. This vase I carried in my hand on horseback 
for many a weary mile, fearing accidents, and ultimately 
brought it safe to England. Here, as I saw that he was 
much struck with it, I gave it to my friend, Sir John 
Evans, who read a paper on the piece at the Society of 
Antiquaries, in whose records it is published. 1 It seems 
that the vessel is Roman and unique. Sir John Evans 
ingeniously discovered the method by which it was made, 
and even caused a replica to be manufactured, how, it 
would be too long and difficult to explain. This replica 
I still possess. 

Another find was a marble head that once has worn 

1 Proceedings, March 13, 1890. 



CURIUM 



117 



a bronze helmet. It seems to be of a very good Greek 
style and period. At first I thought that it had adorned 
a statue of a goddess, but a well-known expert tells me 
that after taking measurements, &c, he believes it to be 
a contemporaneous portrait of Faustina, of which lady of 
that name, I am not certain, but I imagine, the elder. 
This head, the best thing of the sort that I can find 
in any Cyprian collection, either in the island or the 
British Museum, I discovered serving the gentleman who 
ploughed it up as a door-stop. But although he valued 
it so little it took me two years to reduce it into posses- 
sion, as I think that the man who owned the land where 
it was found, claimed an interest in the marble. An- 
other beautiful object that came my way was a corroded 
silver ring found in a tomb with an engraved scarabseus 
bezel. This ring the late Mr. Samuel Brown, who gave 
me a whole collection of Cyprian pottery, offered to me 
for any price I chose to fix. But I had spent all my 
money, so I said that I would take it home and sell it 
for what I could get on his account. I disposed of the 
ring for ten guineas to a well-known dealer who passed 
it on to the British Museum for twenty guineas. After- 
wards I felt sad when one of the great experts there 
informed me that it was the best thing of the sort they 
had secured for many a day, being, it would appear, an 
early and exceedingly good copy of some famous work 
of art by, I think, Praxiteles. And the moral of that is, 
as the Queen said to Alice, never be economical when 
you see what your instinct tells you is a good antique, 
or you will live to regret your virtuous impulse. 

Also I procured one or two other objects which I 
submitted to the British Museum. They said they were 
worth keeping — and kept them, by way of exchange 
kindly presenting me with plaster casts edged round 
with blue paper. Perhaps they are better there. I like 
to think so. 

Now it is otherwise. Except the spear-head already 



118 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



mentioned, one silver coin of Alexander is all my 
harvest, and of this I found a better example years 
ago. About Alexanders, my friend, Mr. Christian, an 
old resident in the island, told me a wondrous and 
authentic tale. Some peasants digging, found an 
earthenware pot and in it nearly a thousand gold coins, 
for the most part stamped with the head of that 
monarch. The peasants disposed of them for their 
weight in gold, and they were afterwards sold by the 
fortunate purchasers for seven or eight pounds each. 
Where are they now, I wonder? Imagine the feelings 
of the happy man who suddenly discovered a pot full of 
a thousand such coins as these. 1 By the way I remem- 
ber that a lady once showed me a magnificent necklace 
made of gold coins of Alexander of different sizes, which 
had been given her as a wedding present. Perhaps part 
of that Cyprian find went to make this necklace. But of 
antiquities I must stop talking, since they may have more 
fascination for me than for my readers. 

Our next expedition was to the site of ancient 
Curium, which is said by Herodotus to have been peopled 
by Argives. To reach this ruined city we passed the 
tower of Colossi and lunched in the police-station of the 
beautiful and fertile village of Episcopi, a pleasant place 
for picnics. Thence we rode on a mile or so to the waste 
that once was Curium, through whole rows of tombs, 
every one of which are said to have been plundered by 
the omnivorous Cesnola. In front of us rose a steep 
hill upon whose face could be seen more tombs or rock 
chapels. Up this mount we climbed and at the summit 
came to the ancient city. As usual it was nothing but 
a tumbled heap of stones, but here the anemones grew 
by thousands among them and made the place most 
beautiful. Presently we found ourselves on the site of a 

1 I see that Mr. Hamilton Lang in his book " Cyprus," published 
in 1878, gives a more detailed account of the finding of this 
treasure. 



CURIUM 



119 



temple. The great columns prostrate and broken, the 
fragments of shattered frieze, and the bits of mosaic 
flooring revealed by tearing up the sod, all told the same 
unmistakable story of fallen greatness and a magnificence 
that time, man, and earthquake have combined to deso- 
late. A little further on we reached a spot where the 
ground is literally strewn with fragments of broken 
statues, some of them almost life-size, but the greater 
number small. I picked up the lower parts of two of 
these stone statues and put them into my — or rather 
the zaptietis pocket. As I anticipated, they make 
excellent letter-weights. What a falling off is here ! 
The effigies of the gods of old — the feet that were 
bedewed with tears of amorous maidens and of young 
men anxious to succeed in piratical expeditions, serving 
as the humble necessary letter-weight ! Well, perhaps 
it is more honourable than to be broken up to fill the 
shovel of a Cyprian roadmaker. 

By this spot is a well or pit which is said to be quite 
full of these broken statues. Probably they were thrown 
here on some occasion when the temple was sacked. 
Picking our path on horseback through the countless 
stones for two-thirds of a mile or so, we came to another 
and a larger temple. This was the great fane dedicated 
to Apollo Hylatus. A wonderful place it must have 
been when it stood here in its glory, peopled by its 
attendant priests and the crowd of worshippers flocking 
to its courts with gifts. The situation on that bold 
highland brow is superb and must be most splendid of 
all at dawn when the first level rays of the sunrise sweep 
its expanse. Doubtless the ancients placed the temple 
of their sun-god here that it might catch his arrows 
while darkness yet veiled the crowded town below, the 
wide, fertile plain which we call Episcopi, and the fields 
about the Norman tower of Colossi — compared to these 
old columns but a mushroom of yesternight. 

It is not possible, at any rate to the uninstructed 



120 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



traveller with scant time at his disposal, to follow the 
exact configuration of this temple of Apollo and its courts, 
nor indeed if he knew them, would these details be of 
any great assistance to the imagination. Everywhere are 
tumbled stones, shattered pillars, some of them elegantly 
wreathed, overthrown altars and cavernous holes, in the 
depths of which underground cisterns and passages 
become visible. In short the cult of the worship of 
Apollo and his brother and sister divinities — always 
excepting that of Venus who is immortal — is not more 
ruined, neglected, and forlorn than this unvisited place, 
once its splendid sanctuary. Apollo was a joyous god, 
but evidently he had his stern side. At any rate not far 
away a headland runs out into the sea, and from its 
precipitous bluff those who had offended against his 
majesty — or had differences of opinion with his priests — 
were hurled to expiate their crimes by a terrifying 
death. At least so says tradition. 

Leaving the temple of the lost Apollo our animals 
scrambled on through the stones till at last these ceased 
and we came to a stretch of bush-clad country. This is 
now one of the Government reserves kept thus to enable 
the timber of which the Turks denuded the island to 
spring up again safe from the ravages of man and beast. 
In such reserves goats are not allowed to graze, for of 
all animals these do the most damage to young timber, 
which they gnaw persistently until it perishes. It is 
not too much to say that where there are many goats 
no forest can arise. Cyprus in bygone ages was a densely 
wooded land. Strabo, writing in the first year of the 
Christian era, says of it: — 

" Such then is Cyprus in point of position. But in excellence 
it falls behind no one of the islands, for it is rich in wine and 
oil and uses home-grown wheat. There are mines of copper in 
plenty at Tamassos, in which are produced sulphate of copper 
and copper-rust, useful in the healing art. Eratosthenes talks 
of the plains as being formerly full of wood run to riot, choked 



CURIUM 



121 



in fact with undergrowth and uncultivated. The mines were 
here of some little service, the trees being cut down for the 
melting of copper and silver ; and of further help was ship- 
building, when men sailed over the sea without fear and with 
large fleets. But when even so they were not got under, 
leave was given to those who would and could cut them 
down to keep the land they had cleared in full possession and 
free of taxes." 

Alas ! far different is the case to-day. The Turks 
suffered the timber to be destroyed in all save the most 
inaccessible places, and the wasteful habits of the peasants 
who, if allowed, will cut up a whole tree to make a 
single sheep-trough, completed the ruin. So it came 
about that at last the land which used to supply Egypt 
with all the wood necessary to build her fleets was 
almost denuded save on the mountain peaks of Trooidos, 
with the result that the rainfall lessened alarmingly. 
Since its advent the British Government has done its 
best to remedy this state of affairs. As it has no money 
to spend in planting it has adopted another and perhaps 
on the whole a more effective method. Although the trees 
have vanished in Cyprus, by the wonderful preservative 
agency of nature their seeds remain in the soil, and if 
goats can be kept off the hills where forests stood, forests 
will again arise. Thus, although to speak of it anticipates 
my story a little, it was with a most real pleasure that 
in travelling from Nicosia to Cyrenia I saw the tops of 
great mountains which fourteen years ago I remembered 
naked as a plate, covered to-day with a thick growth of 
young firs that must now be fifteen or twenty feet in 
height. A generation hence and those mountain tops 
will once more bear a splendid forest. Care, however, 
is required which I do not think is always exercised. 
The new-formed forest should be thinned, as the wise 
woodman knows how to do, and the peasants allowed the 
use of the thinnings. This would prevent their destroy- 
ing the trees by secretly firing the country, either from 



122 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



irritation and spite, or to get the benefit of the young 
grass which springs up afterwards. 

In this particular reserve near Curium of which I 
speak, however, to my surprise I saw a flock of sheep and 
goats in the charge of a herd. On asking how this came 
about, Mr. Michell, the commissioner for the Limasol 
district, who kindly accompanied us and gave us the 
advantage of his knowledge and experience, told me that 
the owners of these animals claim ancient rights of which 
they cannot be dispossessed. These rights endure until 
the man dies, or sells his flock. They are however un- 
transferable, nor may he add to the number of the 
animals which he grazes. Thus by degrees the matter 
mends itself. 

In the midst of this bush-clad plain stands the 
ancient stadium of Curium, where according to tradition 
the old inhabitants of classic times celebrated their 
chariot races. In considering the place I was much 
puzzled by one detail. The course is about two hundred 
yards or six hundred feet long, but according to my 
rough pacings it never measured more than eighty-four 
feet at the end where the chariots must turn. I could 
not understand how three or four vehicles, harnessed 
with four horses abreast, could possibly manage to 
negotiate this awkward corner at full speed without 
more smashes than would tend to the success of the en- 
tertainment. On reflection I am convinced that chariot 
races were not run in this place. It has never, I 
think, been a hippodrome, but was intended solely for 
athletic games and foot-running. To this supposition its 
actual measurements give probability, as they tally very 
well with those which were common in old days. 

This stadium is still singularly perfect ; its walls 
being built of great blocks of stone which here and there, 
however, must have been shaken down by earthquakes, 
for nothing else could have disturbed masonry so solid. 
The visitor can see also where the spectators sat, and in 



CURIUM 



123 



the midst of that desolate scrub-covered plain it is 
curious to think of the shouting thousands gathered from 
Curium, Amathus, and perhaps Paphos, who in bygone 
generations hailed the victor in the games and hooted 
down the vanquished. Now the watching mountains 
above, the eternal sea beneath, and the stone-ringed area 
of their fierce contests remain — nothing more. All the rest 
is loneliness and silence. Dust they were, to dust they 
have returned, and only wondering memory broods about 
the place that knew them. These relics of a past which 
we can fashion forth but dimly, seem to come home 
with greater vividness to the mind when a traveller 
beholds them, as on this spot, in the heart of solitudes. 
Seen in the centre of cities that are still the busy haunts 
of men they do not impress so much. 

So we turned back to Limasol, riding by another 
road along the headlands which overhang the ocean, and 
pausing, as I did now and again, to watch the wide- 
winged vultures sweep past us on their never-ending 
journeys. Very solemn they looked hanging there upon 
outstretched pinions between the sky and sea, as they 
hung when the first Phoenician galley rowed to the 
Cyprian shores, as they will hang till the last human 
atom has ceased to breathe among its immemorial plains 
and mountains. 



CHAPTER X 



LIMASOL TO ACHEBJTOU 

Hope, almost eclipsed off the Italian shores, rose again 
like a star at Limasol, for thither came post-cards from 
the Brindisi Cook saying that our lost luggage had 
actually been discovered and despatched to the care of 
the Alexandria Cook, who would forward it at once. 
Indeed it was time, for one feels, however generous- 
hearted may be the lender, that it is possible to wear out 
a welcome to a borrowed dress-suit. The Flora came 
in ; we rushed to meet her, but nobody on board had 
even heard about our luggage. Then followed expensive 
cables and in due course a fateful answer from the de- 
luded Alexandria Cook : " Cyprus quarantine restrictions 
forbid shipment." 

I confess that at this point I nearly gave way, but 
recovering, commenced the study of the maritime regula- 
lations of Cyprus, to be rewarded by discovering that the 
importation of " rags and worn clothing was prohibited 
until further notice." The " worn clothing " referred to, 
I may explain, are the cast-off garments that have clad 
the pilgrims to Mecca, or the donkey boys of Cairo. 
Applied in any other sense no traveller or inhabitant 
could appear in a presentable condition on the island, 
since that which they carry on their backs would be 
" worn clothing." Yet, such is the inexorable stupidity 
of officials in the East, thus was the clause — none too 
clearly drafted, I admit — rendered by I know not whom 
in Alexandria. 

Then followed more telegrams, letters of mingled 
threat and entreaty, and so forth, till many days after- 

124 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 125 



wards at length the luggage reappeared and with it a very- 
pretty bill. The matter seems small, even laughable 
when written down in after-days, but at the time it was 
troublesome enough, especially as the remote places of the 
earth are just where a visitor must dress most carefully. 

On the termination of our stay at Limasol, our 
plan was to go by sea to Paphos, forty miles away, 
where our mules would meet us, thence to ride to 
Lymni where an enterprising English syndicate is at- 
tempting to reopen the old Phoenician copper mine, 
and lastly by Pyrga and Lefka to the capital, Nicosia; 
in all about five days' hard travelling, for the most 
part over mountains. 

As the time of departure drew near, mighty and 
exhausting were the preparations. Packing is always a 
task as laborious to the mind as to the body. But when 
it means thinking out what is to go on the mules, what 
to go to Nicosia, what to the final port of departure, what 
to be thrown away as too cumbersome to carry, and what 
must be kept with the traveller at all hazards in the 
very probable event of these various parcels and belong- 
ings vanishing away to be seen no more, then positive 
genius and genius of a peculiar sort is required to deal 
with the emergencies of the situation. However at last 
Cabbages, that is the muleteer, departed with his animals 
on which were laden camp-beds, kettles, pounds of tea, 
candles, and I know not what besides, with instructions 
to await our arrival at Paphos. The day passed on and 
it was announced that the Flora was once more in sight. 

We went to the office and it was suggested that I 
should take the tickets. Now Paphos is a harbour where 
the voyager can only land in fine weather, whence, too, 
if it be not fine he is carried on to Egypt, where he 
must wait until the unwearying Flora again begins her 
weekly round. As it happens, in the course of my life 
I have had some experience of remote places where one 
cannot land or embark. Indeed a mishap which once I 



126 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



met with at one of these in a far country entailed upon 
me a considerable risk of being drowned, a large expendi- 
ture of cash, some anxiety of mind, and a five days' 
journey in a railway train. But although it is rather 
interesting, I will not tell that tale in these pages. 

" I suppose," I said to the agent, " that we shall be 
able to land at Paphos ? " 

" Oh ! I think so," he replied casually, whereon I 
intimated that I would wait to take the tickets till the 
boat came in. 

In time one learns to put a very exact value on the 
" I think so " of a shipping agent. In this instance it 
assured me that there was not a chance of our visiting 
the temple of Venus on the morrow. 

The Flora came in and with her my friend, Mr. 
Charles Christian, who was kindly going to conduct us 
upon our tour. 

" Shall we be able to land at Paphos ? " I shouted. 

He shook his head. " All the agents say we can," he 
said, " but the captain and the boatmen say we can't." 

Then resignedly I suggested that we had better give it 
up, since I could not face the risk of making an involun- 
tary trip back to Egypt. Mr Christian agreed and it was 
given up, though with great regret, a message being de- 
spatched to Cabbages to travel with his mules to Nicosia. 

It was a true disappointment to me thus on my 
second visit to the island, as on my first, to be prevented 
from visiting the very home of Aphrodite, the place that 
the goddess chose to set her foot when she rose from the 
foam of the sea. Not that there is, as I understand, 
much more to be seen at either Old or New Paphos — 
Paleopaphos and Neopaphos ; they are six or eight miles 
apart — than among the ruins of other ancient cities in' 
the island. Still I wished to look upon the place where 
St. Paul once reasoned with Sergius Paulus, the Deputy. 
What a spectacle even for those ancient shores of Chittim 
that have witnessed so many things — the mighty Apostle 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 127 



before the gates of the wanton shrine of Venus, thunder- 
ing denunciations at the wizard Elymas and smiting him 
to darkness with the sword of the wrath of God ! I 
desired to have stood upon that road which, as Strabo 
tells us, " was crowded year by year with men and women 
votaries who journeyed to this more ancient shrine " from 
all the towns of Cyprus, and indeed from every city of the 
known world. I desired also to have seen the tumbled 
wrecks of the temple, that " sacred enclosure " which 
Perrot and Chipiez recreate so vividly and well that, as I 
cannot better them, I will quote their words, where 

" everything spoke to the senses ; the ah* was full of perfume, or 
soft and caressing sounds, the murmur of falling water, the song 
of the nightingale, and the voluptuous cooing of the dove 
mingled with the rippling notes of the flute, the instrument 
which sounded the call to pleasure or led the bride and bride- 
groom to the wedding feast. Under tents or light shelters built 
of branches skilfully interlaced, dwelt the slaves of the goddess, 
those who were called by Pindarus in the scoliast composed for 
Theoxenius of Corinth, the servants of the persuasion. These are 
Greek or Syrian girls, covered with jewels and dressed in rich 
stuffs with bright- coloured fringes. Their black and glossy 
tresses were twisted up in mitras, or scarves of brilliant colour, 
with natural flowers such as pinks, roses, and pomegranate 
blossoms hung over their foreheads. Their eyes glittered under 
the arch of wide eyebrows made still wider by art ; the freshness 
of their lips and cheeks was heightened by carmine ; necklaces of 
gold, amber and glass hung between their swelling breasts ; with 
the pigeon, the emblem of fertility, in one hand, and a flower 
or myrtle-branch in the other, these women sat and waited." 

But Aphrodite was against me who serve Thoth, a 
foreign Egyptian god with whom she had naught in com- 
mon, and doubtless did not admire, since — except in 
Ladies' Colleges — learning does not consort with loveliness. 
So her shrine remains and will remain unvisited by me. I 
regretted also not being able to examine the copper- work- 
ings of the ancients at Lymni with the vast pit whence 



128 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the ore was dug, the mountains of slag that lie around, and 
the tunnel hundreds of yards long which the genius and 
perseverance of the men of our generation have burrowed 
through the solid rock with a lake of water above their 
heads, in search of the lode which is waiting somewhere to 
make the fortunes of those who find it. 1 Last of all and 
most of all perhaps, was I sorry not to see the beautiful 
stretch of mountain country which lies in this part of the 
island. 

Yet it was well that we did not attempt the adventure 
travelling overland, as for a while we contemplated, for 
immediately thereafter it came on to rain and rained for 
days. Now a journey on muleback over the roadless 
Cyprian hills in rain is not a thing to be lightly under- 
taken. The paths are slippery and in places dangerous, 
but worst of all is the continual wet which, wrap himself 
as he will in macintoshes, soaks baggage and traveller. 
If he could dry himself and his belongings at the end of 
the day, this would matter little, but here comes the 
trouble. The fire made of wild thyme or what not that 
suffices to cook his food in a police-station or a tent, will 
not draw the moisture from his clothes or blankets. So 
he must sleep wet, and unless the sun shines, which in these 
seasons it often does not do for days together, start on wet 
next morning. In any country this is risky, in Cyprus it 
is dangerous, for here, as all residents in the land know, a 
soaking and a subsequent chill probably breed fever. 

I may add that certain passengers, pooh-poohing 
doubts, went on by the Flora to Paphos, to find them- 
selves in due course in Egypt, whence they returned ten 
days or so later. One gentleman, Mr. Mavrogordato 
indeed, did succeed in landing, but from another steamer. 
When the Paphos boatmen learned b}^ signal or other- 
wise that he was on board this ship, which as I under- 
stand, having cargo to discharge, rolled off the port for 

1 Although the main lode is not yet discovered, since the above was 
written extensive deposits of copper ore have been struck at Lymni. 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 129 



days, they clad themselves in lifebelts and made an effort, 
with the result that ultimately he was landed, also in a 
lifebelt and little else. The journey, I gather, was risky, 
but there comes a time when most of us would rather 
take the chance of being drowned than after a pro- 
longed, involuntary tour return miserable and humiliated 
to the place of starting. 

At length came the eve of our departure from Lima- 
sol, not for Paphos, but for Famagusta via Larnaca and 
Acheritou. In the afternoon we went for a walk and 
gathered many wild flowers, and as the sun set I betook 
myself to stroll upon the jetty. It was a calm evening 
and the solemn hush which pervaded the golden sky and 
the sea, still heaving with recent storm, made the place 
lovely. Some brutal boys were trying to drown a cat, 
but to my delight the poor creature escaped them and 
scrambled along the rough planks to the shore. They 
followed it into the town, and I was left alone there 
listening to the water lapping against the piers and 
watching an old fisherman in a fez sitting still as a 
statue, his line between his fingers. He did not seem 
to belong " to the nineteenth century. He might have 
lived, and doubtless in the persons of his progenitors 
did live, one or two or three or four thousand years 
ago. I smoked my cigarette and contemplated him, 
half expecting that presently he would draw out a brass 
bottle, as was the fortune of fishermen in the " Arabian 
Nights," and thence uncork a Jinn. But the brass bottle 
would not bite, or the fish either. Somehow it reminded 
me of another scene — a little pier that runs out into the 
icy waters of the North Sea at Reykiavik, whence on 
such an eve as this I remember seeing a boy angling 
for the flat fish that lie in the yellow sands. Only 
here in Cyprus were no eider-duck, and there in Iceland 
rose no minarets or palms. 

I do not suppose that I shall see Limasol again, but 
thus while memory remains I wish ever to recall it, with 

I 



130 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



its twilight stillness, its illimitable darkling ocean, its 
quaint eastern streets and buildings, and over all of them 
and the mountains beyond a glorious golden pall of sunset. 

On a certain Sunday — everybody seems to travel upon 
the Sabbath in Cyprus — the three of us, my nephew, Mr. 
Christian, and myself, started in a rattle-trap carriage 
dragged by four scaffoldings of ponies, one of which 
was dead lame, for Larnaca, about forty-five miles away. 
There were many agitations about this departure. First 
of all arrived a sulky-looking Greek, who declared that 
the carriage could not take the luggage and refused to 
allow it to be loaded. This was rather gratuitous on 
his part, as it seems that he had no interest in the convey- 
ance, except some possible unearned commission.- Then 
it was doubtful whether the dead-lame horse could go at 
all ; but after a nail had been extracted from his bleeding 
frog he was pronounced to be not only fit, but eager for 
the journey. At this season of the year it is customary 
in Cyprus to turn the horses and mules on to green 
barley for three weeks, whence they arrive fat and well- 
seeming. This is why all draught animals were then so 
hard to hire. 

At length with many farewells we creaked off through 
the narrow streets and difficult turnings of Limasol, to 
find ourselves presently in the open country. Here among 
the springing corn I saw white thorns in bloom, though I 
think that their species differs slightly from our own; 
also many carob- trees, some of them in the warmer 
situations now beginning to form their pods. 

Trees, by the way. do not as a rule belong to the owner 
of the soil. If you buy a piece of land in Cyprus, it will 
be to find that the timber on it is the lawful possession 
of somebody else, with all rights and easements thereto per- 
taining. These must be purchased separately, a fact that 
makes the possession of property under the prevailing 
Turkish law a somewhat complicated and vexatious affair. 

I noticed that at the extremity of the boughs many 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 131 



of these carobs, especially in the case of old specimens, 
were disfigured by bunches of red and rusty leaves. On 
inquiring the reason Mr. Christian informed me that the 
harm is due to the ravages of rats which live in the 
hollow boles and gnaw the juicy bark of the young 
shoots. Sometimes they destroy the entire tree, but the 
Cypriotes are too idle to kill them out. They prefer 
to lose their crop. The goats too damage everything 
that they can reach, and show extraordinar}^ ingenuity in 
their efforts to secure the food they love. Thus with my 
own eyes I saw a couple of these intelligent animals 
reared up upon their hind-legs, their fore-feet propped 
together in mid air for mutual support, their bearded 
heads outstretched to pluck the succulent shoots above. 
The group thus formed would have furnished an admir- 
able subject for a sculptor, but I have never seen it 
represented in any work of art, ancient or modern. Per- 
haps it is too difficult for easy treatment, or it may 
be of rare occurrence. One of the methods by which 
Cyprian peasants avenge injuries upon each other, is to 
attempt to destroy the olive-trees of an offending neigh- 
bour by cutting the bark with knives. Some of the 
olives which we passed upon this journey were disfigured 
with curious wart-like growths upon their ancient boles, 
which Mr. Christian informed me, as he believed, had 
been produced by such acts of petty malice practised 
perhaps hundreds of years ago. In these instances of 
course the trees had ultimately recovered. 

The country through which we passed was on the 
whole very desolate. Although a good deal of the land 
seemed to be under cultivation of a kind, we saw few 
villages. These, I suppose, lay hidden behind the hills, 
but in truth the population is scant. Different indeed 
must it have been in the days of the Roman occupation. 
Then there were enough people in Cyprus to enable the 
Jews who had settled there to put two hundred and 
forty thousand to the sword in the course of a single 



132 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



revolt, that is, a hundred thousand more than the present 
population of the island. 

After we had driven for nearly five hours and 
beguiled the tedium of the road by lunching in the 
carriage, we came to a half-way house or hovel, called 
Chiro-Kitia, i.e. Kitia of the Pigs. Although it looked 
somewhat dreary in the rain which fell from time to 
time, it was a prettily situated place, hill-surrounded, 
fronting a bold brown mountain which lay between it 
and the sea, and standing over a green and fertile bottom 
with olive-gardens and fig-trees through which a torrent 
brawled. The inn itself, if such it can be called, had 
a little verandah, reached by external steps, half ladder 
and half staircase. From this verandah we entered the 
guest-room, which was whitewashed and scribbled over 
with writings in English, Turkish, Greek, and French; 
with drawings also whereby long-departed travellers had 
solaced the weary hours of their stay. This room was 
stone-paved and furnished with a table, a bench, a bed, 
and some rush-bottomed chairs. Here the mistress of 
the rest-house, the mother of several pretty little girls, 
who were standing about in the mud ragged and bootless, 
presently arrived with refreshments, a sort of cream 
cheese that is eaten with sugar, and tiny cups of sweet 
Turkish coffee accompanied by glasses of water with 
which to wash it down. 

Mr. Christian asked me how old I thought this good 
woman might be. I replied nearly sixty, and indeed she 
looked it. He said that she was about twenty-six, and 
that he remembered her not many years ago as a pretty 
girl. Since that time, however, she had presented the 
world with an infant regularly once a year, and her 
present weary, worn-out aspect was the result. 

" You shouldn't have so many children," said Mr. 
Christian to her in Greek. 

" God sends them,"' she answered with a sad little 
smile. 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 133 



This poor woman, with another of her familiar 
troubles close at hand, was in the unhappy position of 
being separated from her husband, now doing " time " 
under the care of Mr. Mavrogordato. She told us that 
he had come into this misfortune on the false evidence 
of the keeper of a rival rest-house some few hundred 
yards away ; the only other dwelling in the place, indeed. 
As to our house and the owner there was a sad, and 
if true, a cruel tale of how its host, he of the jail, 
seeking to better his fortunes had put up a mill upon 
a piece of land at the back of the dwelling ; how the rival 
had waited until the mill was erected and then claimed the 
land, and various other oppressions and distresses which 
resulted in assaults, false evidence, and for one of them, a 
term of retirement. Mr. Christian told me that the story 
was accurate in the main, and added that out of such 
quarrels as these come most of the frequent Cyprian mur- 
ders. It is quite likely that the injured man will emerge 
from jail only to lie up behind a wall with a loaded gun, 
thence in due course to return to the care of Mr. Mavro- 
gordato steeped in the shadow of a graver charge. 

The scene from the verandah, at least while it rained, 
was not much more cheerful than the story of our hostess. 
To the right lay a little patch of garden with nothing 
particular growing in it, surrounded by an untidy fence 
of dead thorns. Behind this were filthy sheds and 
stables, in one of which kneeled half-a-dozen angry- 
looking camels, great brown heaps, with legs doubled 
under them, showing their ugly hock-joints. The saddles 
were on their backs but the loads lay beside them, 
and resting against these reposed their drivers, smoking ; 
motley-garbed men with coloured head-dresses, half- 
cap, half-turban, who stared at the wretched weather 
in silence. In front of the house a pair of geese were 
waddling in the mud, while a half-starved cat crouched 
against the wall and mewed incessantly. Presently we had 
a little welcome excitement, for along the road came a 



134 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Turk mounted on a donkey. He was followed by three 
wives also mounted on donkeys, one or two of them bear- 
ing infants, and shrouded head to foot from the vulgar 
gaze of the infidel, in yashmal:s and white robes that 
in such chilly weather must be somewhat cheerless wear. 
They passed chattering and arguing, their poor beasts 
piled up behind the saddles with what looked like, and I 
believe were, feather-beds, for whatever else these people 
leave behind, they like to take their mattresses. Then 
the prospect was empty again save for the groaning 
camels, the geese, the thin cat, and the pretty little 
ragged girls who stood about and stared at nothing. 

Wearying of these delights after an hour and a 
half or so, as the rain had stopped at length, I went for 
a walk along the edge of the stream which looked as 
though trout would nourish there, did it not dry up in 
summer. Here, growing among the grasses I found 
several beautiful flowers, ranunculi, anemones, and others 
that were strange to me. Also I noted our English 
friends, chaffinches and sparrows, looking exactly as they 
do at home, only somewhat paler, as is the case with 
almost every other bird I saw. I suppose that the hot sun 
bleaches them. One sparrow that I saw flying about was 
pure white, and the larks of which there are two varieties, 
crested and common, are almost dust-coloured. By the 
way these larks never soar like their English cousins. 

At length the poor screws being rested, or a little 
less tired, we resumed our journey, travelling for some 
distance through hills. What a pity it is that it does 
not please the War Office to make Cyprus a half-way 
house for troops on their road to India, where they might 
grow accustomed to a warm climate without running any 
particular risk to health. Also there would be other 
advantages. The great lesson of the present war in 
Africa is the value of mounted infantry who can shoot, 
think for themselves, and ride over rough country. 
What a training-ground Cyprus would afford to such 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 135 



troops as these. There are horses and perhaps the best 
mules in the world in plenty ; the country is wild and 
mountainous, and nothing would be hurt in manoeuvring 
men. Moreover every conceivable physical difficulty can 
be found here and dealt with for practice as occasion 
may require. There is heat, there is cold, there are 
droughts and rains, flooded torrents to be bridged and 
precipices to be climbed ; forests to take cover in and 
plains to scout over ; besides many more advantages 
such as would appeal to a commander anxious to educate 
his army to the art of war in rough countries. 

Why then does not the Government always keep a 
garrison of say five or ten thousand mounted men 
manoeuvring through the length and breadth of Cyprus ? 
This would assist the island and produce a force that 
ought to be absolutely invaluable in time of war. Also, 
the place being so cheap, the cost would be moderate. 
I give the suggestion for what it is worth. 

It was past nine at night when at last we crawled 
into Larnaca, the journey having taken three hours 
longer than it should have done owing to the weakness 
of our miserable horses. Next morning we started for 
Acheritou near to Famagusta, where we were to be the 
guests of Messrs. Christian, who are now completing their 
contract for the great drainage works and reservoirs 
which have been undertaken by the Government of 
Cyprus with money advanced by the British Treasury. 
Of these I shall have something to say in their place. 

Leaving Larnaca in a high wind, for the first few 
miles we passed through a very grey and desolate part 
of the island, having the sea on our right and flat 
swampy lands upon our left. Striking inland we halted 
for a few minutes to look at a curious stone tower of the 
Lusignan period, in appearance not unlike a small Colossi, 
which raises its frowning walls among the dirty mud 
dwellings of a dilapidated, poverty - stricken, Turkish 
village. There is nothing remarkable about the building 



136 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



which is now tenanted only by goats and pigeons, except 
its age. Doubtless it was once the stronghold of some 
petty noble, built for refuge in times of danger. After- 
wards we came to a place, Pergamos, where stood some 
deserted-looking huts, out of one of which ran a large 
rough-haired dog. 

" That dog is all that is left of the Dukobortzi," was 
Mr. Christian's cryptic remark. 

I inquired who or what the Dukobortzi might be and 
learned that they are a sect of vegetarian Quakers from 
the Caucasus distinguished from their countrymen, and 
indeed the rest of mankind, by various peculiarities. 
Thus they have no marriage ceremony, all their earnings 
go into a common fund, and whole families of them sleep 
in a single room. One of the chief articles of their faith, 
however, is a horror of killing. This it was that brought 
them into conflict with the Russian Government, who 
persecuted them mercilessly because, being men of peace, 
they refused to serve in the army. In the end the 
English Society of Friends exported them, settling two 
thousand or so in Cyprus and another three thousand in 
Canada. A place less suited to this purpose than Per- 
gamos could scarcely be found in the whole island. To 
begin with the Dukobortzi are vegetarians, and the land 
being here unirrigated will only grow vegetables for 
about half the year. Also the climate of the locality, 
which is very hot, was not at all congenial to emigrants 
from the Caucasus with a perfect passion for overcrowd- 
ing at night. So the poor people sickened rapidly and a 
considerable number died. Some of them went to labour 
at the irrigation works, but were quite unable to bear the 
sun. Then they tried working at night and resting dur- 
ing the heat, but still it did not agree with them. In 
the end they were helped to join their co-religionists in 
Canada, and now all that remains of them is the rough- 
haired Russian dog, which must feel very lonely. They 
were it seems in most respects an estimable people, 



LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 137 



gentle and kindly, but clearly this was no Promised Land 
for them. 

Cyprus seems to be a favourite dumping-ground for 
philanthropists who wish to better communities that 
cannot flourish elsewhere. I remember that when I was 
last in the island some well-intentioned persons had for- 
warded thither a motley assortment of Whitechapel Jews, 
who were expected to turn their old hats into shovels 
and become raisers of agricultural produce upon lands 
that had been provided for the purpose. Needless to 
say they entirely refused to cultivate the said lands. 
The unfortunate Commissioner of the district had been 
placed in charge of them and never shall I forget his 
tale of woe. He furnished them with implements, but 
they would not plough ; with seeds, but they declined to 
sow. As the charitable society in England was endow- 
ing them with sixpence a head per diem, and food is 
cheap in Cyprus, things went on thus until the fund 
dried up. Then the Commissioner descended full of wrath 
and interviewed the head of the settlement, who met 
him, as he told me, clad in a tall black hat and adorned 
with lavender kid gloves. Much argument followed, till 
at last the exasperated Commissioner exclaimed — 

"Well, you must either work or starve. Will you 
work ? " 

The kid-gloved representative shook his head and 
murmured " No." 

" Will you starve ? " asked the Commissioner. 

Again the answer was a gentle but decided " No." 

" Then what the devil will you do ? " shouted the 
enraged official. 

" We will telegraph to the Lord Mayor of London," 
replied the representative suavely. " In fact, sir, we have 
already telegraphed." 

The end of the matter was that the members of the 
community dispersed to the coasts of Syria, where, when 
last heard of, they were understood to be doing well in 



138 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



more congenial lines. The Whitechapei Jew has no 
agricultural leanings. He prefers to till some richer 
field. 

Leaving Pergamos we crossed an enormous stony- 
plain that is named after it. This tract of country, 
there is no doubt, would grow certain classes of timber 
very well, and within twenty years of its planting, 
produce a large revenue. Unfortunately, however, the 
Government has no money to devote to the experiment, 
and private capital is wanting. 

Next we came to the pretty village of Kouklia and 
passed the recently finished dam enclosing an area of 
two square miles, now for the first time filling up with 
water. Then we began to travel round the great basin 
of the Acheritou reservoir, which when finished is to 
include forty square miles, most of which will be under 
water during the winter season. It is destined to irri- 
gate the lower part of the Messaoria plain, which com- 
prises league upon league of some of the most fertile 
soil in the world. On our way we came to a stony 
pass in the neck of two small hills, where I noticed that 
every rock was scored with rude crosses. It appears 
that some years ago frequent complaints were received 
by the ecclesiastical authorities to the effect that this 
place was badly and persistently haunted, the ghosts 
being of a violent and aggressive order, given to sallying 
forth at night with uncanny shouts and leapings, to the 
great disturbance of peaceable travellers on the highway. 
Feeling that the thing must be dealt with, every avail- 
able priest and bishop assembled, and cursed and exor- 
cised those ghosts by all lawful and efficient means ; 
stamping them morally flat and abolishing them so that 
from that day to this not one of them has been heard or 
seen. To make their triumph sure and lasting the holy 
men cut and painted these crosses upon the rock, with 
the result that no " troll " of dubious origin can now 
stop there for a moment. 




Wall of New Reservoir, Acheritou 




LIMASOL TO ACHERITOU 139 



At length we saw the house that the Messrs. Christian 
have built to live in while the works are in progress. 
It is splendidly placed upon a bluff overlooking the great 
plain, and from a distance, I know not why, has the 
appearance of a small ruined temple. Very glad were 
we to reach it about three o'clock in the afternoon, and 
partake of a lamb roasted whole in the Cyprian fashion, 
with other luxuries. 

Just below this house start the six miles of massive 
dam that runs across the plain to form the retaining wall 
of the vast body of water which is to be held up. As 
yet this water is allowed to escape, but next winter, when 
the dam is completed, it will be saved and let out for 
purposes of irrigation. There is nothing new in the 
world. In the course of the building of the dam were 
discovered the remains of one more ancient, also running 
across the plain, but enclosing a smaller area ; indeed its 
sluice is to be pressed into the service of the present 
generation. I examined it, and came to the conclusion 
that the masonry is of the Roman period. Mr. J. H. 
Medlicott of the Indian Irrigation Department, the very 
able engineer who has designed these great works and 
carried them out so successfully, is however of opinion 
that it is Venetian. Probably he is right. This at least 
is clear, that people in days long dead could plan and 
execute such enterprises as well as we do to-day. Roman 
or Venetian, the stone- work is admirably laid and bound 
together with some of the hardest and best cement that 
ever I saw. 

The Messrs. Christian, who have contracted to com- 
plete this undertaking, employ about three thousand men 
and women, mostly on a system of piece-work. In the 
evening I walked along the great dam and saw them 
labouring like ants there and in the trenches which are 
to distribute the water. They were then engaged in 
facing the dam with stone which is fitted together but 
not mortared, carrying up great blocks upon their backs 



140 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



and laying them in place under the direction of overseers. 
At first the provision of this facing stone was difficult 
and expensive, as the stuff had to be carted six or seven 
miles; indeed its cost threatened to swallow up most 
of the contractors' profits. Then it was, that within 
half a mile of the place where the material was needed, 
very luckily Mr. Charles Christian in the course of an 
evening walk discovered an outcrop of excellent stone, 
soft to work but with the property of hardening in water. 
The cutters get it out by a simple but effective system, 
no doubt that which has been followed by their ancestors 
for thousands of years. A skilled man can loosen a great 
number of suitable blocks in a day, apparently with ease. 
When I tried it, however, I found the task somewhat 
beyond me. 

From the strong resemblance of the material I 
believe that this was the very stone used by the builders 
of the ancient dam below the house. Doubtless they 
discovered the quarry as Mr. Christian did, although 
oddly enough the natives who had lived in the neigh- 
bourhood all their lives, declared that nothing of the sort 
existed for miles around. It was the old case of eyes 
and no eyes. 

I said some pages back that living in Cyprus is cheap, 
and of this here I had an instance. The house put up 
by Messrs. Christian for their convenience while directing 
the works is spacious, two-storeyed, and capitally built of 
stone, with, if I remember right, a kind of mud roof laid 
upon rafters covered with split cane mats. Properly 
made and attended to, such roofs last for years. The 
whole cost of the building, which was quite large enough 
to accommodate with comfort seven or eight people and 
servants, was less than £300, including the large veran- 
dahs. In England it would cost at the very least a 
thousand, and probably a great deal more. 



CHAPTER XI 



FAMAGUSTA 

That night a great gale blew roaring round the house as 
though we had been in Coll, or at Kessingland, instead of 
southern Cyprus. In the morning the wind had dropped, 
but the sky was heavy with ominous-looking rain-clouds 
floating here and there in the blue deeps. After break- 
fast we mounted the ponies that had been provided for 
us, a blessed change from the familiar mule, and set out 
to explore the Messaoria plain and the Kouklia dam. 
This magnificent plain, which varies in breadth from ten 
to twenty miles, runs practically the whole length of the 
body of the island from Famagusta on the east to 
Morphu on the west, that is, a distance of about fifty- 
five miles. Once it was a dense forest, now it is open 
level country cultivated here and there, but for the most 
part barren. On either side of it, north and south, 
stretch the two ranges of Cyprian mountains, that of 
Kyrenia and that of Trooidos, and it is the decomposed, 
basic-igneous rock brought down from these mountains 
in the winter-floods by the river Pidias and other torrents 
that form the soil of the plain. 

What a soil it is ! Deep brown in colour, of an un- 
known thickness — it has been proved to fifty feet — and 
I suppose as rich and productive as any in the world. 
Hitherto, or at any rate since the Venetian days, two 
natural accidents however have made it comparatively 
valueless, that of drought and that of flooding. The 
greater part of this end of the plain which I am now 
describing, for instance, has been a swamp in winter and 

141 



142 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



an arid wilderness in summer. It is to remedy this 
state of things that the irrigation dams have been con- 
structed, to hold up the waters in winter and pour their 
life-giving streams forth again in summer. 

In the future all this vast area of land, or thousands 
of acres of it that will fall under their influence, ought to 
produce the most enormous crops. On this point I see 
only one fear ; upon the top surface of the soil, and in 
places going a foot or two into it, are little veins of white 
salty substance, deposited, I suppose, from the floods. 
These may make the surface earth sour and, until they 
are evaporated, affect the health of crops. I know that 
the same thing happens in Coll in the Hebrides, where 
new-drained lands have to be treated, I think with lime, 
in order to sweeten them. It is my belief that here, 
however, one or two deep ploughings and the exposure 
of the earth to the scorching heat of a Cyprian summer 
would do this work effectively. I have suggested to Mr. 
Christian that he should cut out a block, or blocks of 
soil to the depth of three feet, enclose them as they 
stand in boxes with the natural vegetation growing on 
the top, and ship them to me. This he has promised to 
do, and I shall then submit them for analysis to the 
chemists of the Royal Agricultural Society, to which I 
belong, who will doubtless be able to advise as to the 
nature and power of the salts, and to say what method 
should be adopted to be rid of them. 

Now when flooding is prevented and water will be 
available for irrigation, it seems to me that upon the 
Messaoria, if anywhere on the earth, farming ought to 
pay. I can imagine no more interesting and, as I believe, 
profitable experiment, than to take up let us say five 
thousand acres of this area upon easy terms such as no 
doubt the Government would grant, paying its price for 
example by a certain tithe of the profit of the produce 
terminable in a certain number of years. This land 
might then be farmed by the process, simple, where 



FAMAGUSTA 



143 



labour is so cheap, of making raised roadways to divide 
it into blocks with an irrigation ditch at the foot of each, 
along which roadways a pair of steam ploughs could 
travel, cultivating the expanse between. 

Consider the advantages. An inexhaustible soil 
which the silt from the irrigation water would go far 
towards manuring, if indeed, with an occasional fallow, 
other manure is necessary. Fields that can, whenever 
needful, be absolutely cleaned of weeds and rubbish by 
ploughing and laying them dry for a few months in the 
fierce summer sun which kills every root and seed. A 
great variety of possible crops from cotton down, whereof 
very often two could be taken in succession in a single 
season. For instance wheat or barley to be harvested 
about May, followed by maize to be harvested in autumn. 
A port, Famagusta, within seven or eight miles, and a 
splendid market for most products at Port Said, and for 
the barley in England, where it is much in request among 
brewers on account of its saccharine and golden bright- 
ness. A district where the ordinary cattle and horse 
sicknesses seem to be unknown except anthrax, which 
can be avoided with common care ; where, moreover, 
oxen and sheep fatten marvellously upon grasses, lucerne, 
and the carob beans of the country, and meet with a 
ready sale at good prices in Egypt. Such are some of 
the most obvious merits of this neglected plain ; added 
to which must be the ample supply of very inexpensive 
and fairly intelligent labour. 

Of course there are drawbacks also, or the place would 
be a paradise. To begin with it is very hot in summer, 
when Europeans must be careful about exposing them- 
selves to the sun, although this heat is generally tempered 
by the wind blowing up from the sea which is near at 
hand. Next the Messaoria plain has a reputation for 
fever. Personally I believe this to be exaggerated, as is 
shown by the fact that among the three thousand men, 
women, and children employed by the Messrs. Christian, 



144 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the number of casualties from sickness has been very 
small indeed, and this although they frequently sleep in 
the trenches of newly-turned earth at all seasons of the 
year. The doctor, an Armenian, who from his appearance 
and speech I took to be a Scotchman, and a gentleman 
who seemed to understand his business very thoroughly, 
told me however that occasionally they had cases, re- 
sulting for the most part from the use of the swamp 
water, of a horrible and sometimes fatal ailment which 
he called " marbled " fever. This sickness is, I believe, 
known by the same name in parts of Central and South 
America. Sufferers from it feel icy cold with an exterior 
temperature that sinks a good deal below normal, whereas 
the interior temperature is 105° or 106°. The symptoms 
are those of congestion, I think of the blood-vessels, and 
indeed congestion is found on necropsy. Also there are 
other fevers, but the doctor said that they were not com- 
mon and that the general health was good. 

For a long while before their house was built the 
Messrs. Christian, Mr. Medlicott, and their various English 
assistants lived as best they could in native huts or tents. 
Yet I think I am right in saying that during the two 
years or so while the works have been in progress, none 
of them have suffered from serious illness, although the 
nature of their occupation prevented them from refuging 
from the summer heat for the accustomed three months on 
Trooidos. This fact speaks for itself, and on the whole I in- 
cline to the belief that with ordinary care and precautions, 
healthy residences and pure water — boiled for preference 
— adult Europeans of temperate habits would have little 
to fear from the climate of the Messaoria plain. There 
is, however, a danger I have mentioned before which 
cannot always be avoided, that of a soaking followed by 
a chill, producing fever. This must be risked. After all 
it is not uncommon in hot countries. 

Another drawback is that to prove successful such 
farming must be under absolutely honest and intelligent 



FAMAGUSTA 



145 



supervision. The casual company manager despatched 
from England would in eight cases out of ten bring it to 
financial grief. The farmer should live on the spot, giving 
his own constant care to every operation. Otherwise those 
interested in the venture would be certain to hear from 
time to time that this or that crop had failed. What 
they would not hear is that the overseer had neglected to 
irrigate the cotton, or whatever the crop might be, and 
thus destroyed the prospects for the year, because he was 
away on a holiday at Nicosia, or perchance had taken a 
trip to Egypt, leaving a native in charge. But this 
necessity for the eye of the owner or faithful steward 
holds good of every business in all parts of the world. 
" The farmer's foot is the best manure " runs the old 
agricultural saw. 

To sum the matter up, although, being a farmer, 
and understanding something of the question, I should 
like to dwell upon it at greater length, I can only say 
that if I were a young man, owning, or with the com- 
mand of £10,000 capital, nothing would please me better 
than to make such an experiment upon the irrigable por- 
tion of the Messaoria, near to the Kouklia dam for choice. 
I believe that, given health and strength, I should return 
thence in fifteen years or so with no need to farm any- 
thing except the fortune I had acquired. 

Indeed it is sad to see so much wealth, agricultural 
and other, lying ungarnered in Cyprus while millions 
of pounds of English capital, as many of us know to our 
cost, are squandered in specious, wild-cat schemes at the 
very ends of the earth. Were the island in the heart of 
West Africa or China, for instance, companies would be 
formed to exploit it, and in due course lose their money 
and the lives of their managers. But as it is only a 
British possession close at hand nobody will trouble. 

The great cry of Cyprus is for capital. Whatever 
may be the fate of the present copper- mining venture at 
Lymni, there is no doubt that with enough money the 



146 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



old lode could be discovered. The same thing applies 
to the other copper areas : the ancients could not mine 
deep, the metal must be there, and, now as of old, to the 
value of sums uncountable; yet nobody will even put 
down a bore-hole to look for the deposits. In conversa- 
tion I ventured to suggest to the Governor, Sir William 
Haynes-Smith, that the Government should do this on 
their own account, since if once they proved the mines 
they could make handsome terms with the companies 
which would come forward to work them. The answer 
was, " We have no money, the Turkish tribute takes all 
our money." 

This is true. Every year the British taxpayer is 
informed that a grant of £30,000 has been made in aid 
of the revenues of Cyprus. He is not informed that 
never a penny of that £30,000 comes to Cyprus; that, 
on the contrary, Cyprus has a surplus of revenue over 
expenditure, even in its present starved condition, of 
more than £60,000 a year. This £60,000 is taken, 
nominally, towards paying the tribute of £93,800 per 
annum, promised to the Turk when we took over the 
island. The £30,000 annually granted by Parliament, 
ostensibly in aid of the revenues of Cyprus, goes to make 
up the balance which cannot be wrung from the island. 
But — and here is the point — that money is never seen 
at Constantinople. It stops in the British Treasury. In 
1855, a loan of I forget how much, raised by Turkey, 
was jointly guaranteed by France and England. Need- 
less to say, under these circumstances Turkey does not 
trouble to pay the bondholders their interest. Neither 
does France pay as a joint-guarantor, why I know not, 
but probably because we are afraid to ask her. So John 
Bull pays. What is more, he was tricked. The revenue 
received by the Porte from Cyprus was assessed at double 
its actual amount. Also he pays four per cent., whereas 
at the present rates of money, on the credit of the 
British Empire, the loan could easily be converted to one 



FAMAGUSTA 



147 



of two and a half or three per cent. If this were done, 
practically it would ease Cyprus of its tribute and make 
it a most prosperous colony. But to do it does not please 
the Treasury — probably it would involve a good deal of 
trouble. So year by year we hear of a grant of £30,000 
in aid of the revenues of a possession which has an annual 
surplus of £60,000, that might with assistance and fore- 
thought, as I believe firmly, within a single generation 
be multiplied into a surplus of £600,000. Further, the 
Turkish tribute might be capitalised; indeed to do our 
Government justice, I believe that efforts, hitherto un- 
successful, have been made in this direction. But as yet 
nothing happens. 

Another possible source of wealth in Cyprus, as I 
suggested with reference to the Pergamos plain, lies in 
the judicious planting of valuable timbers which, as the 
history of the island shows, would grow here like weeds 
upon land that is practically useless for other purposes. 
I must instance one more, that of the wine industry. 
That Cyprus produced excellent vintages in the past is 
proved by history — the Ptolemies all got tipsy on them, 
especially, if I remember right, Ptolemy Auletes, Ptolemy 
the Piper. To this day indeed, although it is so ill 
prepared, the wine is good. Mavro is a strong, black, 
rather rough wine, but I prefer the lighter, white variety 
which we drank at Limasol. Then there is the vintage 
called Commanderia, famous in the Crusading times and 
produced upon certain mountains only. This is of the 
Madeira class, nutty in flavour and very sweet, more 
of a liqueur than anything else. Indeed when the 
Madeira vines were killed out by disease, that island was 
replanted, I believe, from the Commanderia stock, the 
original vines, it was said, having come from Cyprus. 
At Kyrenia, our kind host, Mr Tyzer, the judge, gave us 
some Commanderia to drink which an old woman had 
brought round in a wine-skin — she only made a few 
gallons from a patch of vines — and sold to him at a 



148 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



price of about twopence a bottle. To my fancy it was 
a wonderful wine, but perhaps I am no judge of such 
matters. Other specimens which I tasted struck me as 
heady and cloying to the palate. This is certain, how- 
ever, that if the cultivation was carried out upon a 
proper system, a vintage could be produced that now, as 
of old, would command a high price. Here again is 
room for enterprise and capital. 

To return to our expedition. We rode for miles 
across the great plain with the beautiful peaks of the 
mountains showing in bold outline against the sky to 
our right. All the way we followed wide dykes in course 
of being delved out of the rich soil to carry the waters 
that are to be stored behind the dam. In these dykes 
hundreds of Cypriotes were at work, most of them Chris- 
tians, but some, if I remember right, Turkish. Men and 
women labour together here by the piece. Thus one might 
see a man and his wife, his sons and daughters, engaged 
in scooping out their allotted task, which had been 
already carefully measured and pegged. They all seemed 
very good-humoured and much chaff went on between 
them and their employer, Mr Charles Christian, because 
of the non-arrival of the water-cart upon which they 
rely for refreshment at their thirsty toil. They were 
dying of drought, they declared, and he would have to 
send to bury them, whereupon he replied that it was for 
the good of their health to make them thinner, and 
so forth. 

At length following the endless dykes and observing 
many things by the way, such as the character of the 
grasses, we came to the completed Kouklia dam, a 
splendid work, on the further side of which the waters 
are now gathering for the first time. It is curious to see 
how soon the wild duck have found out this new and 
excellent home, where whole flocks of these beautiful 
birds now swim peacefully, keeping themselves, however, 
well out of gunshot. Thence we turned homeward across 



FAMAGUSTA 



149 



the wide dreary plain that as I hope within the next ten 
years will be rich with luxuriant crops. Indeed this 
undertaking has already so greatly advantaged the 
peasants that, as I hear since I left the island, after their 
simple fashion they put up prayers in the churches 
imploring that every blessing may fall upon the heads 
of Messrs. Charles and Percy Christian. They ought also 
to pray for Mr. Chamberlain, who might, on occasion, be 
glad of such spiritual assistance. Whatever may be said 
against that statesman, this at least is true ; he is the 
best Colonial Minister that we have had for many a long 
year. A business man himself, he understands more or 
less, and to a certain extent can sympathise with, the 
needs and aspirations of the undeveloped countries in his 
charge. To him and no one else it is due that the spell 
of consistent neglect has been broken and the small sum 
of £60,000 necessary for the carrying out of these works 
has been advanced to Cyprus. 

On our return we were overtaken by a heavy thunder 
rain and soaked. Unfortunately, although the house was 
quite close to us, we could not gallop home since the 
downpour made the clay soil so slippery that to do so 
would have been to -risk a fall. Therefore we were 
obliged to walk our horses and get wet. As a change 
was at hand, however, in this instance the ducking did 
not matter. 

Towards evening we started on a sporting expedition, 
so at last the gun that I rescued from the Customs with 
such trouble was of use. We had hoped for some 
woodcock-shooting among the scrub on the hillsides, but 
it was so late in the season that enough birds were 
not left to make it worth while to go after them. The 
duck remained, however, and to these we devoted our 
attention. 

The place where we were to station ourselves was 
three or four miles away, a ridge of rock between two 
lakes over which the wild -fowl flight at sunset. I was 



150 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



asked if I would walk or ride, and gaily declared in 
favour of walking. Before I got back I was sorry for 
rny choice. We waded through, swamps, we scrambled 
along an ancient causeway built of blocks of stone, many 
of them missing, and over a slope of rough ground to 
the appointed ridge, where we took up our posts, four 
of us, at a distance of about two hundred yards from 
each other. It was a lonely and beautiful spot, set in 
a bow of the hills like the section of an amphitheatre, 
its vast open circus lying behind us. In front, looking 
towards the sea and another lake whence the duck were 
to come, lay a desert plain covered with low scrub across 
which the fresh wind whistled. Above was a stormy 
heaven, splendid to look at but not favourable for fowl- 
shooting, since the heavy clouds blotted out the light. 
What is wanted on these occasions is a clear sky marked 
with light fleecy clouds, for against these it is easy to see 
the birds as they sweep towards the guns. 

I took my place, sitting on one rock and laying my 
cartridges ready upon another over which my head pro- 
jected, wrapping myself up also in a coat which I had 
brought with me, for now the air felt very damp and 
cold, especially after our arduous trudge. For a long- 
while nothing happened and I was left in the midst 
of the intense silence to examine the drear scenery, 
the ancient rocks worn and hollowed by aeons of weather, 
and the flowers and grasses which grew about me. 
The sun set, the sky darkened and darkened, the black 
masses of clouds seemed to dominate the earth. At 
last I heard a sound of whistling wings and about a 
hundred yards to my right I saw a flight of duck, their 
long necks extended, shoot past me like arrows and 
vanish. Then came another flight sixty yards off, or 
more, at which I ventured a useless shot that echoed 
strangely along the stony ridge. Now the night fell 
rapidly like something tangible. One little lot of fowl 
passed in front of me within forty yards, and of these I 



FAMAGUSTA 



151 



managed to see and bag the last, which fell with a heavy 
thud fifty yards or more from where it had died in air. 
After this it was hopeless ; the duck had been disturbed 
too late by the beaters sent to flush them in the pans 
towards the sea. 

On they came in thousands and tens of thousands ; 
the air was full of the rush of their wings, and the earth 
echoed with their different cries — the deep note of geese, 
the unearthly call of curlew, and the whistling pipe of 
teal. Sometimes they seemed to pass so close to me 
that they nearly struck my head, but against the black 
clouds nothing was visible except a brown line that 
vanished almost before it was seen. I fired wildly and 
once or twice heard the thud of a falling bird far behind, 
but these I never retrieved. As sport our expedition 
was a failure ; moonlight and a clear sky were needed, 
both of which were absent. But in its wildness, in the 
sense of infinite, winged life rushing past us, in the last 
view of that desolate country as the darkness embraced 
it, it was a perfect and unique experience. I am old 
enough to be no longer very anxious for a bag, therefore 
I enjoyed that evening's expedition with its one resulting 
widgeon, more than many a day's pheasant-shooting when 
the slain, carefully raised for the occasion, might be 
counted by hundreds. 

At length it grew pitch dark, so that it was difficult 
for us to find each other in the gloom. Still more 
difficult was our homeward journey, steering by the 
appropriate light of Venus which glowed before us, 
lying low upon the sky. First came the causeway. This 
relic of antiquity which shows how careful its inhabitants, 
now so long dead, once were about their roads in Cyprus, 
is some eight feet wide and built of large blocks of stone. 
On either side of it lie the waters of the swamp, several 
feet deep in places. Much of this massive raised road- 
way has been destroyed by floods or other accidents of 
time, so that here and there one must leap from block 



152 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



to block or subside into the pools between. Now 
" Stepping - Stones by Starlight " would make a good 
title for a novel but are in fact an awkward path, and 
very glad was I when with the assistance of a Cypriote, 
who seemed to be able to see in the dark, I had nego- 
tiated the last of them. After these stepping-stones we 
advanced over a mile or two of greasy mud about six 
inches deep. Then came some ploughed patches of 
ground with ditches in them, and another long stretch 
of mud, this time covered with water. Struggling to its 
edge we found ourselves on a path strewn with boulders, 
and fell down in deep but invisible ruts. Next followed 
a stroll through a large patch of standing barley which 
was reeking wet and reached almost to our middles, 
where we were exposed to the attentions of the " skilos " 
or homeless dogs, which in Cyprus are such a nuisance. 
At last, however, about nine o'clock we saw the welcome 
lights of home. I confess that I was glad to reach its 
shelter, thoroughly tired out as I was and absolutely 
wringing wet with perspiration, a fruit of the labours of 
that interminable walk. Little expeditions of this sort 
teach us that we are not so young as once we were. 
Still I enjoyed our abortive duck-hunt. 

My nephew, fired by the sight or rather the sound of 
more wild-fowl than he had ever dreamt of, announced 
his intention of being back at the place by the first 
streak of dawn to catch the birds as they passed from 
the marshes out to sea. I congratulated him upon his 
superb energy, but declined to share the adventure, fore- 
seeing in the depths of my experience as in a magic 
crystal exactly what would happen. It did happen. 
About an hour after we had finished breakfast on the 
following morning, two hot and weary young men ap- 
peared carrying guns and cartridges, but nothing else. 
They had risen a little too late, the duck were up before 
them and they reached the distant ridge just in time to 
see the last flock of geese vanishing seaward. 



I 



Desdemona's Tower, Famagusta 




Ruins of Ancient Church, Famagusta 



FAMAGUSTA 



153 



The rains had departed for the present and the day 
was lovely, with so clear an air that every little peak 
and pinnacle of the mountains seemed close at hand. It 
was with great regret that on so fair a morning we bade 
farewell to our hosts and started for Famagusta. I 
should have liked to stay longer at Acheritou. The place 
has many charms, not the least of which is its solitude. 

The tower, where according to ancient tradition 
Desdemona was actually stifled by Othello, is an odd place 
for picnics, yet thither on our arrival we were escorted 
through the ancient gates of Famagusta. Indeed the 
feast was spread exactly where the poor victim lived and 
died, that is, if ever she existed beyond the echoes of 
romance. 

In the Venetian days Famagusta, which is said to be 
built upon the site of the ancient Arsinoe, was a great 
commercial port. Now its harbour is choked and, 
principally because of the heat within the walls, such 
population as remains to the place lives about a mile 
away, in a new town called Varoshia. How am I to de- 
scribe this beautiful mediaeval monument ! An attempt 
to set out its details would fill chapters, so I must 
leave them to the fancy of the reader. The whole 
place is a ruin. Everywhere are the gaunt skeletons of 
churches, the foundation walls of long-fallen houses, and 
around, grim, solid, solemn, the vast circle of the rich- 
hued fortifications. What buildings are here ! Millions 
of square yards of them, almost every stone, except 
where the Turks have cobbled, still bearing its Venetian 
mason's mark. WaDs thirty feet thick ; great citadels ; 
sally ports; underground foundries still black with the 
smoke of Venetian smithies ; fragments of broken armour 
lying about in the ancient ash-heaps ; water-gates, ravelins, 
subterranean magazines; gun embrasures, straight and 
enfilading ; enormous gathering-halls now used as grain- 
stores ; tortuous, arched vaults of splendid masonry, the 
solid roof-stones cut upon the bend ; piers running out to 



154 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



sea commanding the harbour mouth ; every defence and 
work known to mediseval warlike art. Then round them 
all, hewn in places through the solid rock, the mighty 
ditch sixty feet or more in depth. It was an impregnable 
stronghold this Famagusta, and in the end it fell to the 
power of the greatest of all generals, Hunger, and not 
through the batterings of Mustafa the Moslem, known as 
the Destroyer, and his vast army. 

The Turk came and conquered, how I will describe 
presently, and from that hour the glory of Famagusta 
departed. To begin with, no Christian was allowed to 
live within the gates. Even the visitor of distinction 
must not ride or drive there, but walk humbly as became 
a representative of a conquered faith. " Where the Turk 
sets his foot, there the grass will not grow," but here 
the saying is reversed, the grass grows everywhere amid 
the empty walls. Indeed barley is sown where men 
dwelt in thousands, and the Christian churches, some of 
them, were turned into baths for the comfort of the 
Mussulman, while the rest rotted into ruin. One of the 
three hundred and sixty-five of these ruined fanes — 
it is said that there were this number — that of St. Peter 
and St. Paul, a very noble and beautiful building, is .now 
a Government grain- store, a desecration which I do not 
think ought to be allowed under the rule of England. 

The grand Gothic cathedral wherein lie the bones of 
many knights and noted men of the Lusignan period, 
whose wealth, intelligence, and labour reared it up, is 
now a mosque. I am not learned enough to describe 
its architecture in detail, this should be left to those who 
understand such matters. I can only say that it is 
lovely. In the front are three pointed, recessed arches, 
the centre pierced by the doorway surmounted with 
exquisite carved work. Above are three windows in 
similar style, all of them now walled up, and above them 
again two ruined towers. Fixed on to one of these, that 
to the left of the spectator as he faces the building, is a 



FAMAGUSTA 



155 



wretched and incongruous Moslem minaret, a veritable 
pepper-pot. Within the place is bare and empty, with 
here and there a carpet, or a tawdry pulpit. 

Is it right, I ask, now that the country is again in 
the hands of a Christian power, that this ancient shrine 
dedicated in the beginning to the God we worship, should 
be left in the hands of the followers of Mahommed ? I 
say, and the remark applies also to the cathedral at 
Nicosia, that in my humble judgment this is wrong. 
A matter of policy, that is the answer. But has policy 
no limits ? Would it be so very hard and dangerous 
for this great empire to say to those Turks who are 
now its subjects : " This is a Christian place which your 
fathers snatched with every circumstance of atrocity 
and violence from Christians. Take your shrines else- 
where. The land is wide and you are at liberty to set 
your altars where you will." It is true that they might 
answer : " Does it lie in your mouth to protest when you 
turn other buildings equally sacred in your eyes into 
grain-stores, and clerks sit upon their altars to take 
count ? " 

For generations the Turks have used Famagusta as a 
quarry, exporting most of the stone of its old buildings to 
Egypt. Now, it is commonly said, our Government pro- 
poses to follow their evil example, since the present 
railway and harbour scheme involves the destruction of 
the beautiful curtain- wall abutting on the sea and the 
use of the material it contains in the projected works. I 
have been assured by a competent engineer and others 
who can judge, that such an act of vandalism is absolutely 
unnecessary; that this monstrous thing will be done, if 
it is done, principally for the sake of the shaped stone 
that lies to hand. Will nobody stop it ? If the Colonial 
Office refuses to intervene, where are the Company of 
Antiquaries and where is Public Opinion ? Where too is 
the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments ? 

Famagusta is one of the most perfect specimens of 



156 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



mediaeval fortification left in the world. It can never be 
reproduced or reborn, since the time that bred it is dead. 
Now in our enlightened age, when we know the value of 
such relics, are the remains of the old city to be wantonly 
destroyed before our eyes ? I trust that those in authority 
may answer with an emphatic " No." 

In itself the scheme for clearing out the ancient 
harbour and making of Famagusta a port connected by 
railway with Nicosia is good. But the haven thus re- 
constructed, although old Sir John Mandeville, more 
regardless of the truth than usual even, declares that it 
was one of the first harbours of the sea in the world, 1 
can never be of great importance or competent to shel- 
ter liners and men-of-war. Also I imagine that it will 
be incapable of defence except by sea-power. Now at 
Limasol it is different. There, owing to the natural con- 
figuration of the shore, a harbour where fleets might ride 
could be made with two entrances far apart, and having 
seven or eight miles of high land between it and the 
ocean, so that in practice nothing could touch the vessels 
that lay within. The necessary dredging would of course 
cost a good deal, although the bottom to be acted upon is 
soft and kindly. Perhaps the total expenditure might 
mount up to a million and a half, or even two millions, the 
price of a few battle-ships. Battle-ships are superseded 
in a score of years ; the harbour, with proper care, would 
remain for centuries. We need such a place in this part 
of the Mediterranean. Is not the question worth the 
serious care of the Admiralty and the nation ? 

1 In the same passage this king of travellers — and their tales — tells us 
that in Cyprus they "hunt with papyons," which are "somewhat larger 
than lions." The "papyons " are not quite imaginary, since cheetahs were 
used for sporting purposes in mediaeval Cyprus. When Sir John goes on 
to add, however, that the inhabitants of Cyprus in search of coolness 
"make trenches in the earth about in the halls, deep to the knee, and 
pave them and when they will eat they go therein and sit there," we 
wonder if he was well informed. The preceding passage also, which un- 
happily cannot be quoted, makes us marvel even more. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 

I could see but few changes in Faniagusta since I visited 
it fourteen years ago. Trees have grown up round the 
tombs where the execrable and bloody Mustafa and some 
of his generals lie buried; also the Commissioner, Mr. 
Travers, has planted other trees in portions of the moat 
where they do not flourish very well owing to the stony 
nature of the subsoil. Moreover, a large fig-tree which I 
remember growing in the said moat has vanished — I 
recall that I myself found a Cyprian woman engaged in 
trying to cut it down, and frightened her away. Probably 
when we had departed, she returned and completed the 
task. Lastly, when I was here before the iron cannon- 
balls fired into the city by the Turks three centuries 
since, still lay strewn all about the place as they had 
fallen. Now they have been collected into heaps, or 
vanished in this way or in that. Otherwise all is the 
same, except that Time has thrust his finger a little 
deeper into the crevices of the ruined buildings. 

What a tragedy was the siege of Famagusta ! Pro- 
bably few of my readers, and of the British public at 
large not one in every hundred thousand, have even 
heard of that event. Yet if it happened to-day the 
whole world would ring with its horror and its fame. 
The Boer war that at present fills the newspapers and 
the mouths of men has, to this day of writing, cost us 
at the outside six thousand dead. At the siege of 
Famagusta, taking no account of those in the city, if I 
remember right for I quote from memory, more than 

157 



158 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



forty thousand of the attacking force alone perished 
beneath the walls. 

This in brief was the tale as it is told by Fra Angelo 
Calepio of Cyprus, an eye-witness and a doctor in theology 
of the order of Preachers, and others. In the year 1570, 
according to Fra Angelo, the Sultan Selim was persuaded 
by his head mufti to undertake the enterprise of the con- 
quest of Cyprus from the Venetians : " avarice, lust of 
fame, difference of religion, diabolic suggestion, divine 
permission, an unbounded appetite for new territory to 
be added to the Ottoman dominion, these were the remote 
causes for the conspiracy against Cyprus. A nearer cause 
was the wish of Selim, the Emperor of the Turks, to 
build a mosque and school." Cyprus was to furnish the 
revenues for this pious enterprise. Fra Angelo says also 
that the Sultan was influenced to the conquest of the 
island " from his fondness for its excellent wines and the 
beautiful falcons that are taken there." 

A great army was collected and allowed, owing to 
the mismanagement of affairs by the Venetians and local 
authorities, to invest the inland capital of Nicosia. After 
a gallant defence by the untrained troops and inhabitants 
within, they took the town. It is curious to read to-day, 
that grim badinage such as has recently been practised 
by the Boers investing Ladysmith, was indulged in by 
the Turks at Nicosia. Thus they drove a donkey up the 
wrecked wall crying in mockery, " Don't hurt the poor 
ass, it can do you no harm," and shouted, " Surrender, 
for you are in a bad way." 

The horrors that occurred when once the Turkish 
soldiers were inside Nicosia are too dreadful to dwell on. 
Here is a single example. Says Fra Angelo : " Among 
the slain were Lodovico Podochatoro and Lucretia Calepia, 
my mother, whose head they cut off on her serving- 
maid's lap. They tore infants in swaddling-clothes from 
their mothers' breasts, of whom I could baptize only one," 
and so forth. On the day following the sack the best-looking 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 



159 



of the surviving lads and girls were sold by auction, " the 
buyers taking no thought or count of their noble birth, but 
only of the beauty of their faces." But these poor victims, 
or most of them, were not destined to serve as slaves in 
any Turkish harem. The great galleon of Muhamites and 
two other vessels were laden with them as a gift to the 
Sultan, to Mehmed Pasha, and Murad the Sultan's son. 
But some noble girl or woman, her name is not recorded 
though surely her glory should live on for ever, thinking 
that the death of herself and her companions was prefer- 
able to so infamous a fate, contrived to creep to the maga- 
zine and fire it, with the result that the galleon and 
two other ships with every living soul on board of them 
were blown into the air. The incident is in perfect keep- 
ing with the horrid history of that period throughout 
Europe. 

Famagusta was invested by Mustafa and between 
one and two hundred thousand soldiers and adventurers 
upon September 18, 1570, the defence being under the 
charge of the immortal Mark Antonio Bragadino, the 
captain of the city. For nearly eleven months did the 
little garrison and townsfolk hold out, with but scant aid 
from Venice. They beat back assault after assault — there 
were six or eight of them ; they mined and counter- 
mined ; they made sallies and erected new defences as 
the old were battered down ; in short they did everything 
that desperation could contrive or courage execute. At 
length when only five hundred Italian soldiers and a few 
Cyprian men and women were left sound within their 
gates, and many of their walls and towers had been 
blown into the air, it was want that conquered them, not 
the Turk. 

" The position of the city was now desperate ; within the 
walls everything was lacking except hope, the valour of the 
commanders, and the daring of the soldiers. The wine was 
exhausted, neither fresh nor salted meat nor cheese could be 
had except at extravagant prices. The horses, asses, and cats 



160 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



were consumed. There was nothing to eat but bread and 
beans, nothing to drink but vinegar and water, and this too 
soon failed ! " 

Then after between 140,000 and 170,000 cannon- 
balls, many of which I have seen lying about to this day, 
had been fired into the city, and the Turks had suffered 
a loss of from thirty to fifty thousand men, at length the 
brave Bragadino negotiated an honourable surrender under 
the terms of which the defenders were to be given their 
arms, lives, and goods, " a safe-conduct to Candia under an 
escort of galleys," and the townsfolk the grace of staying 
" in their houses to enjoy what was their own, living like 
Christians without any molestation therefor." 

Upon these terms peace was signed, and the soldiers 
began to embark in the vessels provided for them. The 
next evening, or at any rate upon that of August the 
5 th, the Signor Bragadino, accompanied by about a 
dozen officers and attended by a guard of fifty men, 
according to Fra Angelo, and nearly two hundred accord- 
ing to Bishop Graziani, paid a visit to Mustafa who 
received him courteously and kindly, praising the valour 
of the defence. The visit concluded, they rose to take 
leave, whereupon Mustafa asked that the prisoners cap- 
tured during the siege might be sent to him. Bragadino 
replied that he had no prisoners. Then the Turk, pre- 
tending to be astonished, shouted out, " They were then 
murdered during the truce," and bade his soldiers who 
stood ready to seize and bind the Christians. 

Now it was that the brutal ruffian, Mustafa, showed 
himself in his true colours. The story is best told in the 
words of Mr. Cobham's translation of Fra Angelo Calepio, 
although Bishop Graziani's account as rendered by 
Midgley is almost as good. 

" They were defenceless, for they were compelled to lay aside 
their arms before entering the tent, and thus bound were led 
one by one into the open square before the tent, and cut to 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 161 



pieces in Mustafa's presence. Then twice and thrice he made 
Signor Bragadino, who showed no sign of fear, stretch out his 
neck as though he would strike off his head, but spared his life 
and cut off his ears and nose, and as he lay on the ground 
Mustafa reviled him, cursing our Lord and saying, * Where is 
now thy Christ that He doth not help thee ? ' The general made 
never an answer, but with lofty patience waited the end. Count 
Hercule Martinengo, one of the hostages, was also bound, but was 
hidden by one of Mustafa's eunuchs until his chief's fury was 
passed. He did not slay him, but doomed him, as long as his 
soul cleaved to his body, to continual death in life, making him 
his eunuch and slave, so that happy he had he died with the rest 
a martyr's death. There were three citizens in the tent, who 
were released, but the poor soldiers bound like so many lambs 
were hewed in pieces, with three hundred other Christians, who 
never dreamed of such gross perfidy, and impious savagery. The 
Christians who were already embarked were brutally robbed and 
thrown into chains. 

" The second day after the murders, August 7th, Mustafa 
first entered the city. He caused Signor Tiepolo, Captain of 
Baffo, who was left in Signor Bragadino's room, to be hanged by 
the neck, as well as the commandant of the cavalry. On August 
17th, a day of evil memory, being a Friday and their holiday, 
Signor Bragadino was led, full of wounds which had received no 
care, into the presence of Mustafa, on the batteries built against 
the city, and for all his weakness, was made to carry one basket 
full of earth up and another down, on each redoubt, and forced 
to kiss the ground when he passed before Mustafa. Then he 
was led to the shore, set in a slung seat, with a crown at his 
feet, and hoisted on the yard of the galley of the Captain 
of Rhodes, hung ' like a stork ' in view of all the slaves and 
Christian soldiers in the port. Then this noble gentleman was 
led to the square, the drums beat, the trumpets sounded, and 
before a great crowd they stripped him, and made him sit amid 
every insult on the grating of the pillory. Then they stretched 
him on the ground and brutally flayed him alive. His saintly 
soul bore all with great firmness, patience, and faith : with never 
a sign of wavering he commended himself to his Saviour, and 
when their steel reached his navel he gave back to his Maker his 

L 



162 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



truly happy and blessed spirit. His skin was taken and stuffed 
with straw, carried round the city, and then, hung on the yard 
of a galliot, was paraded along the coast of Syria with great 
rejoicings. The body was quartered, and a part set on each 
battery. The skin, after its parade, was placed in a box together 
with the head of the brave Captain Hestor Baglione, and those 
of S. Luigi Martinengo, G. A. Bragadino, and G. A. Querini, 
and all were carried to Constantinople and presented to the Gran 
Signor, who caused them to be put in his prison, and I who 
was a captive chained in that prison as spy of the Pope, on my 
liberation tried to steal that skin, but could not." 

According to Johannes Cotovicus, or Johann van 
Kootwick, a Hollander whose work was published at 
Antwerp in 1619, this hideous execution of Bragadino 
was carried out by a Jewish hangman. The same 
author tells us that the martyr's skin was in the end 
purchased at a great price by his brother and sons, 
and, five-and-twenty years after the murder, buried in 
a marble urn in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at 
Venice. Here is the inscription and a translation : — 

D. 0. P. 

M. Antonii Bragadeni dum pro fide et patria 
Bello Cyprio Salamina? contra Turcas constanter 

Fortiterq. curam principem sustineret longa 
Obsidione victi a perfida hostis manu ipso vivo ac 
Intrepide sufferente detracta 
Pellis 

Ann. Sal. cio. ic. lxxi. xv. Kal. Sept. Anton, fratris 
Opera et inpensa Byzantio hue 
Advecta 

Atque hie a Marco Hermolao Antonioque filiis 
Pientissimis ad summi Dei patriae paternique nominis 
Gloriam sempiternam 
Posita 

Ann. Sal. cio. ic. lxxxxvi. vixit ann. xlvi. 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 163 



To God the Best and Mightiest. 

The skin of Mark Antony Bragadino, torn from him while 
alive and suffering fearlessly, by the faithless hand of the enemy, 
on the eighteenth day of August, in the year of our Salvation 
1571, when, in the Cyprian war waged against the Turks for 
faith and fatherland, he was overborne in the long siege of 
Salamis, where he commanded with constancy and valour, was 
brought hither from Byzantium by the care and at the cost 
of his brother Antony, and laid here by his devoted sons, Mark 
Hermolaus and Antony, to the eternal glory of God most High, 
of their country, and their father's name, in the year of our 
Salvation 1596. He lived forty-six years. 

In this inscription it will be observed that the 
besieged town is spoken of as Salamis, that being the 
name of the ancient ruined city which stood a few miles 
from Famagusta. 

Thus Famagusta and with it all Cyprus fell into the 
power of the Turk, who for three centuries ruled it as ill as 
only he can do. Now once more it has passed into the 
hands of England. Long may this fair and fruitful island 
abide there, to its own benefit and that of the empire. 

One sad change I noticed on this my second visit to 
Famagusta. Fourteen years ago the gardens of Varoshia, 
as the present town is called, were full of the most lovely 
orange-trees. Even at this distance of time I can recall 
the pleasure with which I walked in one of them, smelling 
the scent of the flowers and considering the golden fruit 
and green, shiny leaves. Now they are all dead, or 
nearly so. The blight of which I have spoken upon a 
previous page, in the absence of remedies that their 
owners were too idle to apply, has slain them. Here 
and there stick up old stems with blackened foliage and 
some shrivelled fruit, sad mementoes of the past that 
would be better done away. 

Often have I wished that I could paint but never 
more so, I think, than at Famagusta, especially one 



164 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



morning when I stood upon the lonely seashore looking 
out across the still more lonely ocean. Storm-clouds 
were gathering, and in their blackest shadow, old as the 
walls of Famagusta perhaps, stood a single giant fig-tree, 
its buds just bursting into points of crinkled, green-gold 
leaf. There was something very strange about the aspect 
of that tree. It looked as though it lived and suffered ; 
it reminded me, fantastically enough, of the tortured 
Bragadino. Its natural bent was sideways and ground- 
wards, but the straight branches, trained thus by centuries 
of wind, lay back from the sloping trunk like the out- 
blown hair of a frightened fleeing woman. In colour it 
was ashen, the hue of death, only its roots were gold- 
tinted, for the shifting sand revealed them, gripping and 
strangling each other like hateful yellow snakes. It was 
such a tree as the Saviour might have cursed for barren- 
ness, and the site seemed appropriate to its aspect. 
About it were the sand-dunes, behind it lay a swamp 
with dead and feathered grasses shivering in the wind. 
To the right more sands, in front the bitter sea, and to 
the left, showing stately against a background of gloom, 
the cathedral of Famagusta still royal in its ruins. As I 
stood a raven flew overhead, croaking, and a great fox 
darker than our own in colour, loped past me to vanish 
among the dunes. 

Altogether it was a scene fitted to the brush of an 
artist, or so I thought. 

Within three miles or so of Old Famagusta He the 
ruins that were Salamis, formerly the famous port of 
the Messaoria plain, where once St. Paul and Barnabas 
"preached the word of God in the synagogues of the 
Jews." It was a town eight hundred years before Christ 
was born however, for a monument of Sargon the Assyrian 
tells of a certain king of Salamis, and until the reign of 
Constantine the Great when an earthquake destroyed it, 
it flourished more than any other Cyprian city. Now 
not even a house is to be found upon its vast site, and 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 165 



the harbour that was always full of ships, is quite silted 
up. Many of the stones also that made its palaces and 
temples, have been built into the walls and churches of 
Famagusta, to find often enough an ultimate home in 
Egypt, whither the Turks exported them. 

One day we visited this place. On our left as we 
went our host, Mr. Percy Christian, pointed out to me a 
tumulus, in Cyprus a rare and notable thing. Some 
years ago he opened it, indeed the scar of that operation 
is still visible. Tunnelling through the outer earth the 
workmen came to a most beautiful tomb, built of huge 
monolithic stones fitted together with an accuracy which 
Mr. Christian describes as marvellous. As it proved 
impossible to pierce these stones, the visitors were 
obliged to burrow lower and force a passage through the 
floor. I could not, I confess, help laughing when Mr. 
Christian added that to his intense disgust he discovered 
that other antiquarians, in some past age, had attacked 
the sepulchre from the further side of the mound. They 
also had been beaten by the gigantic blocks. They also 
had burrowed and made their visit through the floor. 
Moreover, by way of souvenir they had taken with 
them whatever articles of value the tomb may have 
chanced to contain. 

Even sepulchre-searching has its sorrows. I am 
afraid that if after those days and weeks of toil, it had 
been my fortune, full of glorious anticipation, to poke my 
head through that violated floor merely to discover in the 
opposite corner another hole whereby another head had 
once arisen, I should have said how vexed I was and with 
some emphasis. He who labours among the tombs should 
be very patient and gentle-natured — like Mr. Christian. 

Almost opposite to this tumulus is a barrow-shaped 
building also composed of huge blocks of stone, set in an 
arch and enclosing a space beneath of the size of a small 
chapel out of which another little chamber opens. This 
is called the tomb of St. Katherine, why I do not know. 



166 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



From its general characteristics I should imagine that it 
is of the Mycenian period, if the Mycenians understood 
how to fashion an arch. The individual blocks are 
truly huge, and it is nothing short of marvellous that 
men of the primitive races were able to handle them. 
It seems probable that this sepulchre and that in the 
opposing tumulus date from the same age. Perhaps 
both the tombs were first built upon the level with the 
design of covering them in beneath mounds of earth. In 
this event we may conclude that the reputed burying- 
place of St. Katherine was never finished or occupied by 
any distinguished corpse. At least it is a curious and 
most durable monument of the past. 

All this district is very rich in tombs. Near by is 
the village of Enkomi where Mr. Percy Christian, digging 
on behalf of the British Museum, recently found the 
Mycenian gold ornaments now to be seen in its Gold- 
room. These Enkomi tombs are not structurally remark- 
able and lie quite near the surface. Indeed they were 
first discovered by the accident of a plough-ox putting 
his hoof into one of them. At the period of their con- 
struction, however, evidently it was the habit of the 
people who used them as their last resting-places, to 
bury all his most valuable possessions with the deceased. 
Thus one of the graves appears to have been that of a 
jeweller, for in it were found solid lumps of gold sliced 
from cast bars of the metal, as well as fashioned trinkets. 

In many instances they have been plimdered in past 
days, although when this has happened the conscience of 
the ancient tomb-breakers, more sensitive than that of 
us moderns, generally forbade them to take everything. 
Thus in one tomb which Mr. Charles Christian entered, 
though this was not at Enkomi, he found a portion of a 
splendid beaker, worth £60 or £70 in weight of gold, 
which fragment very clearly had been wrenched from the 
vessel and thrown back into the grave. It is a common 
thing in such cases to find that all valuables have been 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 167 



removed except a single ear-ring, or one bead of a neck- 
lace, left among the mouldering bones to appease the 
spirit of the dead. Obviously these poor ghosts were not 
supposed to possess more intelligence than the domestic 
hen which, after all the rest have been removed, will 
continue solemnly to sit upon a single egg, even if it 
be of china. 

In one of the Enkomi tombs Mr. Percy Christian 
discovered the unique ivory casket which is now in 
the British Museum and valued there, I understand, at 
thousands of pounds. 

The story of its finding is curious, and shows how 
easily such precious treasures may be missed. The 
actual clearing of the tombs from loose earth and rubbish 
is of necessity generally left to experienced overseers. 
On a certain evening Mr. Christian came to the diggings 
and was informed by the head man that he had care- 
fully excavated and sifted out this particular grave, 
finding nothing but a few bones. By an after-thought, 
just to satisfy himself, Mr. Christian went into the place 
with a light and searched. Seeing that it was as bare as 
the cupboard of Mother Hubbard, he was about to leave 
when by a second after-thought — a kind of enacted 
lady's postscript — he began to scrape among the stuff 
upon the floor. The point of his stick struck something 
hard and yellow which he took up idly, thinking that it 
was but a bit of the skull or other portion of the 
frame of a deceased Mycenian. As Mycenians, however, 
did not carve their skeletons, and as even in that light 
he could see that this object was carved, he continued 
his researches, to discover, lying just beneath the surface 
much disjointed by damp, the pieces of a splendid ivory 
casket. The method, extraordinarily ingenious, whereby 
he succeeded in removing all these fragments in situ and 
without injury, is too long to describe, even if I remem- 
bered its details. Suffice it to say that he poured plaster 
of Paris or some such composition over them, thereby 



168 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



recovering them in such perfect condition that the 
experts at home have been able to rebuild this valuable 
casket exactly as it was when, thousands of years ago, 
some Mycenian placed it in the resting-place of a beloved 
relative. Doubtless it was that relative's most treasured 
possession. 

In some respects these ancients must have been 
curiously unselfish. Few heirs of to-day would consent 
to objects of enormous value — such as pictures by Titian 
or gold cups by Benvenuto Cellini — being interred with 
the bones of the progenitor or testator who had cherished 
them during life. Yet in the early ages this was done con- 
tinually. Thus, to take one example, I saw not long ago, 
I think in the Naples Museum, a drinking-vase that even 
in its own period must have been absolutely without price, 
which was discovered in the tomb of one of the Roman 
emperors. More, a screw or nail hole has been pierced 
rudely through the bottom of the vase, whether to 
destroy its value or to fasten it to the breast-plate or 
furnitures of the corpse, I cannot say. In Cyprus such 
instances are very common. 

Close by St. Katherine's tomb stands that grove 
which among the inhabitants of this neighbourhood is 
known as the " accursed trees." Those trees nobody will 
touch, since to carry away any portion of them for 
burning or other purposes, is supposed to entail sudden 
and terrible disaster. Indeed it is said that one bold 
spirit who, being short of firewood, dared to fly in the 
face of tradition, suffered not long ago many horrible 
things in consequence of his crime. Of these trees it is 
reported also that they have never put out any leaves in 
spring or summer for uncounted generations, and yet 
neither rot or die. Also that no other trees of the sort 
are known in Cyprus, which I do not believe. Certainly 
at first sight their appearance is very curious, for they 
are spectral-looking and seem to be quite dead. On 
careful examination, however, I solved the mystery. It 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 169 



is this, or so I think ; the thorns grow upon very poor, 
shallow, and stony ground, perhaps over ruins. Nearly 
all their twigs are sere and brittle for they snap between 
the fingers, but if looked at closely it will be seen that 
upon the stems faint new growths can be found here and 
there, which at the period of our visit were just breaking 
into leaf like those of every other tree. Their vitality is 
sufficient to enable them to do this and no more, thereby 
saving them from actual decay. So much for the 
"accursed grove" and its attendant superstition. 

All about this place among the ruins grow huge 
plants of fennel throwing up flower-stems six or eight feet 
high. With the roots of this herb is found a species of 
mushroom or fungus, which is much prized locally and 
considered very delicate eating. We saw a native search- 
ing for these mushrooms by the help of a long stick. 
As he wandered from bush to bush, his steadfast eyes fixed 
upon the ground, this man added a curiously lonesome and 
impressive note to that solemn and deserted landscape. 

The walls of old Salamis, enclosing a great area 
of land, and even some of its gateways, can still be 
clearly traced. The sites of Amathus and Curium were 
desolate, but neither of them, to my fancy, so desolate 
as this, where not even a patch of barley is sown among 
the ruins that stretch on and on, tumbled heaps of 
stone, till they end in barren dunes, self-reclaimed from 
the sea, the place where flighting cranes pause to rest 
after their long journeys. 

Since last I visited this dead city the Cyprus Ex- 
ploration Fund has been at work here, revealing amongst 
other buried buildings the site of the great market, or 
forum, a vast place, at a guess six hundred yards or so 
in length by some two hundred broad. This mart was 
surrounded by columns of Egyptian granite ; there they 
lie in every direction, shattered, doubtless, by the earth- 
quake in the time of Constantine. What labour and 
money it must have cost to set them here. Along one 



170 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



side of this public ground, which in its day must have 
been magnificent indeed, probably beneath the shelter of 
the colonnade, there seems to have been a row of shops, 
whereof some of the name or broken advertisement 
boards carved on marble in Greek letters are still lying 
here and there. Perhaps this was the Burlington Arcade 
of Salamis, but oh ! where are the Arcadians ? 

It is wonderful, in a sense it is almost terrifying, to 
look at this empty stone-strewn plain with its tall yellow- 
flowered weeds, its solitary fungus-hunter, its prostrate 
colonnades ; its mounds that once were walls, its depres- 
sions which once were gates, its few scattered sheep and 
goats hungrily seeking for pasture among the coarse 
growth that in every clime springs up where mankind 
has had his home ; its choked harbour, and then to close 
our living, physical eyes and command those of the mind 
to look backward through the generations. 

Behold the great glittering sea alive with galleys, 
the hollow port filled with rude trading vessels from 
the coasts of Italy, Syria, Greece, and Egypt. Look 
down from this high spot upon the thousands of flat, 
cemented roofs, pierced by narrow streets roughly paved 
and crowded with wayfarers and citizens standing or 
seated about their doors. Yonder, a mile away upon 
the hill beyond the harbour, stands a lovely building 
supported and surrounded with columns of white marble, 
between which appear statues, also of white marble. It 
is the temple of Venus, and those gaily - decked folk 
advancing to its portals are pilgrims to her shrine. 
Turn, and here and here and here are other temples 
dedicate to other gods, all dead to-day, dead as their 
worshippers. And this market at our feet, it hums like 
a hive of bees. There law-courts are sitting; see the 
robed pleaders, each surrounded by a little following of 
anxious, eager clients. There to the south on the paved 
place clear of buildings, except the marble shelters for 
the auctioneers, two sales are in progress, one of human 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 171 



beings and one of beasts of burden. There again in the 
shadow of the colonnade is the provision mart where 
butlers, eunuchs, and housewives haggle loudly with 
peasants and fishermen. At yonder shop several young 
men of fashion and a white-robed woman or two with 
painted eyes inspect the marvellous necklace wrought by 
the noted jeweller named — ah ! his name escapes us. He 
neglected to write it in his tomb whence last year Mr. 
Christian took this golden collar that the artist would not 
part with save at a price which none of those gallants or 
their loves could pay. Hark now to the shouting ! Why 
do those gorgeously attired runners, followed by outriders 
clad in uncouth mail, push a way through the crowd beat- 
ing them with their wands of office ? The king — the king 
himself drives down the street to pass along the market 
towards that temple at its head, where he will make an 
offering because of the victory of his arms over certain 
enemies in the mountains. He is a splendid-looking 
figure, shining with gold and gems, but very sick and 
weary, for this king loves the rich Cyprian wine. 

But such pictures are endless, let us leave them buried 
every one beneath the dust of ages. Our lamp is 
out, only the blank dull sheet is there ; about us are 
ruins, sky and sea, with the fungus-pickers, the yellow- 
flowered weeds and the wandering sheep — no more. 

What a sight must that have been when great 
Salamis fell at last, shaken down, hurled into the sea, 
sunk to the bowels of the earth beneath the awful 
sudden shock of earthquake. Those mighty columns 
shattered like rods of glass tell us something of the 
story, compared to which the burying of Pompeii under 
its cloak of flaming stone was but a trivial woe. But 
each reader must fashion it for himself. My version 
might not please him. 

Not far away from the forum or market are baths. 
One can still see portions of their mosaic floor, polished 
by the feet of many thousand bathers, and the flues that 



172 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



warmed the water. Further on is the site of the great 
reservoir with remains of the aqueduct that filled it. As 
one may still see to-day its waters must have been dis- 
tributed along the streets by means of little marble 
channels at their sides, a poisonous practice that doubt- 
less bred much sickness, since they were open to every 
contamination. It would be interesting to know what 
was the death-rate in these old places. I imagine that 
it would appal us. 

The necropolis of Salamis, as Mr. Percy Christian 
informed me sadly, has never yet been discovered. He 
showed me, however, where he believed it to be, under 
certain drifted sand-heaps near the temple of Venus and 
the seashore, but outside the walls of the city. If so, 
there it will rest till the British Museum ransacks it, 
since private persons may dig no longer. Then what 
treasures will appear ! The gathered wealth of forty or 
fifty generations of the citizens of one of the richest 
cities of the ancient world, or such portions of it as its 
owners took with them to their tombs — nothing less. 

If only all the multitudes which once inhabited these 
walls could rise again before our eyes and in their com- 
pany those of the other dead cities of Cyprus! The great 
Messaoria plain would be white with the sea of their 
faces and alive with the flash of their eyes. There 
would be no standing-room in Cyprus; the millions of 
them would overflow its shores and crowd the brow 
of ocean further than the sight could follow. What 
has become of them ? Where can there be room for 
them — even for their ghosts ? I suppose that we shall 
find out one day, but meanwhile the problem has a 
certain uncanny fascination. Perhaps the stock is really 
strictly limited and we are their ghosts. That would 
account for the great interest I found in Salamis, which 
most people, especially ladies, think a very dull place, 
duller even than Famagusta. 

Perhaps the most interesting relic of all those at 



THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS 173 



Salamis is that ruin of the fane of Cypris which is set 
upon a hill. There is, however, not much to be seen 
except broken columns of the purest white marble, and 
here and there the fragments of statues. But the shape 
of the temple can still be traced ; its situation, overlook- 
ing the sea upon a rising mount where grow asphodel, 
anemones, and other sky-blue flowers of whose name I 
am ignorant, is beautiful, and the sighs of a million lovers 
who worshipped Venus at this altar still seem to linger 
in the soft and fragrant air. 

When we reached home again a lady, our fellow- 
guest, described to me the ceremony of a Turkish 
wedding to which she had been invited that afternoon. 
I will not set down its details second-hand, but the 
bride, she said, was a poor little child of eleven who had 
to be lifted up that the company might see her in her 
nuptial robes and ornaments. The husband, a grown 
man, is reported to be an idiot. It seems strange that 
such iniquities, upon which I forbear to comment further, 
can still happen under the shadow of the British flag. 

This reminds me of another Turkish ceremony. On the 
day that we left Famagusta, at the conclusion of our visit, 
for Nicosia, we halted a while to breathe our horses in the 
village of Kouklia, where, by the way, there is a beautiful 
leaking aqueduct that is covered with maidenhair fern. 
While I was admiring the ferns and the water that 
dripped among them, a Turkish funeral advanced out of 
the village, which at a respectful distance we took the 
liberty of following to the burial-ground. The corpse, 
accompanied by a motley crowd of mourners, relatives, 
sight-seers, and children, was laid uncoflined upon a 
rough bier that looked like a large mortar-board, and 
hidden from sight beneath a shroud ornamented with 
red and green scarves. Upon arrival at the graveyard, 
an unkempt place, with stones innocent of the mason's 
hammer marking the head and foot of each grave and 
serving as stands for pumpkins to dry on in the sun, 



174 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 

the dead man was carried to a primitive bench or table 
made of two slabs set upright in the ground about seven 
feet apart, and a third laid on them crossways. Here, 
while a woman sitting on a little mound at a distance, 
set up a most wild and melancholy wail for the departed, 
a priest, I know not his proper appellation, stepping 
forward began to offer up prayers to which the audience 
made an occasional response. The brief service con- 
cluded, once more the body was lifted and borne round 
the cemetery to its grave, that seemed to be about three 
feet six inches in depth. Here it was robbed of its gay- 
coloured scarves, of which a little child took charge, and 
after a good deal of animated discussion, lowered into the 
hole in a sitting posture with the help of two linen bands 
that one of the company unwound from about his middle. 
Then while a sheet was held over the corpse, as I suppose 
to prevent its face from being seen, some of the mourners 
arranged planks and the top of an old door in the grave 
above it, perhaps to keep it from contact with the earth. 
At this point we were obliged to leave as the carriage 
waited, and I am therefore unable to say if there was any 
further ceremony before the soil was finally heaped over 
the mortal remains of this departed and, I trust, estim- 
able Turk. 

Then we drove on across a grey expanse relieved 
now and again with patches of rich green barley breaking 
into ear. On our right the rugged, towering points of 
the five-fingered mountain called Pentadactylon, stood 
out above the black clouds of a furious storm of 
wind and rain which overtook us. Still we struggled 
forward through its gloom, till at length the sun shone 
forth, and in the glow of evening we saw the walls, 
palms and minarets of the ancient and beautiful city 
of Nicosia. 



CHAPTER XIII 



NICOSIA AND KYRENIA 

Nicosia looks little changed since first I saw it many 
years ago. The trees that were planted in portions of 
the moat by the governor of that day, Sir Henry Bulwer, 
have grown into considerable timbers, though, by the 
way, those set upon the rocky soil round the wooden 
Government House have not flourished as I hoped they 
would. Also the narrow streets are somewhat cleaner and 
more wholesome, if any Eastern town where all household 
slops are thrown out into the gutters or gardens can be 
called wholesome ; that is about all. No, not quite all, 
for sundry houses have arisen outside the new city, pretty 
dwellings with gardens round them, inhabited for the 
most part by officials, and the old Konak, or Turkish 
government office, after standing for some six hundred 
years, has been in great part pulled down, and is now a 
gaping ruin. This seems to me a very wanton and ill- 
judged act, for the building had many beauties which 
can never be seen again. Indeed on second thoughts 
the authorities appear to have shared this view, since 
when it was pressed upon them by some local antiquaries, 
they desisted from their destroying labours, leaving the 
unique gateway untouched, though, unless something is 
oon done to support it, not, I fear, for long. Now it 
s a sheltering place for wanderers, at least I found 
he blackest woman I ever saw, in bed there, who as I 
assed made earnest representations to me, in an un- 
nown tongue, to what purpose I was unable to discover. 
It seemed odd to find so very black a person reposing 

175 



176 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



thus in the middle of the day beneath that draughty 
antique portal. Otherwise all is the same ; even many 
of the government officers remain, like myself grown 
somewhat older, although death and migrations to a 
better post have removed several familiar faces. 

I think it was on the day after our arrival that we 
started with our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Hart Bennett, on a 
visit to Kyrenia, the beautiful little seaport which lies 
across the northern mountains. Our plan was to drive 
to the foot of these mountains and thence to ride on 
mule-back to the wonderful old castle of Hilarion, set 
high upon its almost inaccessible crags. We never got 
there, however, for the rain stopped us. In my case this 
did not so much matter, for I had visited the place before, 
but to my nephew it was a great disappointment. The 
country between Nicosia and the mountains is very 
curious and desolate. Here the strata seem to have 
been tilted on edge by some fearful convulsion in the 
beginnings of the world, so that more than anything 
else they resemble long lines of military trenches of 
brown earth lying behind each other in numberless 
succession, and topped, each of them, with a parapet 
of rock. 

On arriving at the police-station near the foot of the 
mountains, we halted to lunch in the company of friends 
who had ridden out from Kyrenia. Our meeting-place 
should have been Hilarion, but as I have said the rain 
stayed us. To climb up into the bosom of that black 
cloud seemed too forbidding, and had we done so the 
castle is sheltered by no roof beneath which we could 
have picnicked. 

Nobody seems to know who built Hilarion or who 
lived there. Mr. Alexander Drummond, writing in 1754, 
tells us that it is said to have been fortified by one 
of the Lusignan queens, Charlotta, who was obliged to 
shelter there when a usurper called James the Bastard, 
as I think, her half-brother, had been established on the 



NICOSIA AND KYRENIA 



177 



throne by the "Egyptian Power." Cesnola writes also 
that it was a stronghold of the Lusignans and used by 
them as a state prison. Lastly, I remember that when 
I was there in past years, a well-informed gentleman told 
me that it had once stood a siege and been captured, 
whereon three hundred persons, men, women, and chil- 
dren, were hurled from a particularly hideous height 
into a chasm of the mountains. I do not know if there 
is any foundation for this legend. At least the place, 
which still boasts some lovely windows and a huge 
cistern for the storage of soft water, is very wonderful, 
set as it is so high among those giddy peaks. With what 
infinite toil, cost, and pains must some old tyrant have 
reared its towers. Their style by the way is Gothic. 

When the rain began to slacken I went for a walk, 
to look at a wood of young trees which some enterprising- 
gentleman has planted here. They are doing well, and 
among them I was so fortunate as to find the bee orchis 
of our shores in flower. Also, as I think I have said 
upon a previous page, to my delight I observed that all 
the steep-flanked mountains round are becoming clothed 
again with forests of young fir. 

In the afternoon, the weather now being fine, we 
started for Kyrenia on the mules, some of us taking a 
rough ride across country to visit Bella Pais — or De la 
Paix as it is called by Cornelius van Bruyn, who wrote 
about 1693, and other authors — the old Lusignan abbey 
which stands in the village of Lapais, to my mind the 
most beautiful spot in all Cyprus. I am not, how- 
ever, certain that it was an abbey. Drummond (1745) 
questions this, saying that he supposes it to have 
been " the grand commanderie of the island owned by one 
of the knightly orders." He finds corroboration of his 
view in the name Delia Pays, derived, he says, from the 
Italian Delia Paese, though how this proves that the 
building was a commanderie I am at a loss to understand. 
I confess, however, to a certain curiosity as to the true 

M 



178 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



designation of the ruin. De la Paix means, of the peace ; 
de la Pays, of the country ; Bella Pais, beautiful peace ; 
Bella Paese, beautiful country. Whatever may have 
been the ancient form, the last and modern reading seems 
the most appropriate. 

The building is as I remember it years ago, only 
somewhat more dilapidated. Certain cracks are wider, 
certain bits of wall have fallen, its end draws more near. 
This indeed must come within the next few generations 
unless the Government will find money to restore one of 
its most beautiful possessions. At present, as I assured 
myself by personal inquiry, it is not the will that is 
wanting, but the means. While the British Treasury 
grabs at every farthing of surplus revenue, Cyprus has 
no funds wherewith to preserve her ancient and mediaeval 
monuments. 

The place cannot have changed much during the last 
two centuries. Indeed van Bruyn's description of it 
might almost pass to-day. One thing that struck him, 
I remember struck me also. Talking of the underground 
chamber or crypt, he says " one might fancy it all built 
five or six years ago." Even now, over two hundred 
years later, the masonry is extraordinarily fresh. Also 
he speaks of a certain very tall cypress. I think that 
tree, a monster of its kind, is still standing, at least it 
stood fourteen years ago. Owing to the circumstances 
under which we left the abbey, on this visit I had no 
time to seek out its gracious towering shape. 

It is difficult to describe such a building as Bella Pais, 
for to give a string of measurements and architectural 
details serves little — out of a guide-book. Much it owes to 
the wonderful charm of its situation. In the solemn old 
refectory, a beauteous chamber, leading I think to the 
reader's pulpit, is a little stair in the seaward wall, and at 
the head of this stair a window, and out of that window a 
view. If I were asked to state what is the most lovely 
prospect of all the thousands I have studied in different 



NICOSIA AND KYRENIA 179 



parts of the world, I think I should answer — That from 
the little window of the refectory of the Abbey of Bella 
Pais in Cyprus. 

Around are mountains, below lie woods and olive 
groves and bright patches of green corn. Beyond is the 
blue silent sea, and across it, far away but clearly out- 
lined, the half-explored peaks and precipices of Kara- 
mania. I said it was difficult to describe an ancient 
building, but who can describe a view which so many 
things combine to perfect that can scarcely be denned in 
thought, much less in words ? The thousand colours of 
the Eastern day drawing down to night, the bending of 
the cypress tops against the sky, the slow flash of the heav- 
ing ocean in the level rays of sunset, the shadows on the 
mighty mountain tops, the solemnity of the grey olives, 
the dizzy fall of the precipice, the very birds of prey that 
soar about it — all these are parts of that entrancing 
whole. But what worker in words can fit them into 
their proper place and proportion, giving to each its 
value and no more ? 

In this refectory they show rings in the wall where 
Turks stabled their horses when they took the island; 
also many holes at one end caused, the old native 
custodian swore, with bullets fired in sport by British 
soldiers who were quartered here at the time of the 
occupation. I like to think, however, that the Turk is 
responsible for these also, and not Mr. Atkins. 

I went to look at the old chapel, not the building 
now used as a Greek church, which we also visited. 
This chapel is quite in ruins, and weeds grow rankly 
among the stones that doubtless hide the skeletons of 
the priests and Templars who once bent the knee upon 
them. The cloisters still remain with their charming 
pillared arcades and the marble sarcophagus of which all 
the old travellers talk. Now the quadrangle they en- 
close is a grove of oranges which have been planted since 
my last visit. In van Bruyn's day it was a garden, and 



180 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



some other voyager a century or so later talks of it 
as a barley patch. Perhaps the Templars used it as 
a court set out with flower-beds and fountains. 

By the time that we had finished our inspection the 
rain set in again and night was near. For a while we 
waited under the shelter of the cloisters hoping that 
it would stop, but at length made up our minds to a 
soaking and started. We were not disappointed; it 
poured, and that is why in the gathering gloom I was 
unable to look out for my old friend the cypress tree. 
Moreover the road, or rather the track, was awful and 
my mule, a proud and high-stomached beast which had 
waxed fat on green barley, one of the laziest I ever rode. 
My belief is that he had been accustomed to carry 
baggage, not men, and baggage mules have their pace. 
At least being innocent of spurs I could not get him 
along, and to make matters worse, at every slippery or 
awkward place he stumbled out of sheer idleness, once 
very nearly falling in a mud-hole three feet deep. What 
between the mule, the rain, and the cold, it was, I confess, 
with joy that at last we dismounted at the door of our 
host Mr. Tyzer, the judge for the district of Kyrenia. 

Before finally bidding farewell to Bella Pais there is 
one point which I will mention, in the hope that the 
matter may be looked into, that is, if I am not mistaken 
in my surmise. While riding through the village my 
companions and I observed the strangely unhealthy 
appearance of the children, indeed I am sure that several 
of these poor, hollow-eyed little creatures are, or were, 
not long for this world. Now as the site is so high 
and wholesome, I imagine that their ill looks must be 
accounted for in some other way. Perhaps the water 
is contaminated. 

The sights at Kyrenia, now vastly improved from 
what it used to be, are the harbour and the old Venetian 
fortress. Also in former days there was a Phoenician 
rock-cut tomb with the skeleton of the occupant in situ 




Heights of Hii.arion 




Venetian Fortress, Kyrenia 
(Showing window of secret cell) 



NICOSIA AND KYRENIA 



181 



and all its trimmings, such as lamps and jars of 
earthenware. But of this I can find no trace to-day. 
Everybody except myself seems to have forgotten 
all about him. Sic transit gloria — cadaveris. There 
are still, however, plenty of these Phoenician tombs left 
in the neighbourhood. 

The castle is a fine building of the same type and 
period as the Famagusta fortifications and those of 
Nicosia. According to Drummond (1750) "probably 
the whole work was repaired by Savorniani, who in 
the year 1525 demolished the old works of these places 
and re-fortified them." I do not know if he is correct 
and am, I confess, ignorant of the fame of Savorniani, 
although I think I have read somewhere that he was 
a noted military engineer of the period. Now the place 
is used as a jail, a fortunate circumstance, since it makes 
some care of the ancient fabric necessary. Here I 
would suggest that at very small expense the old 
chapel could be restored. This is the more desirable 
as no church exists for the convenience of English 
residents. 

As at Limasol the view from the flat roof of this 
interesting fortress is very fine, commanding as it does the 
rugged heights capped by the grey towers of Hilarion, 
the fertile plain at their foot, and the opposing coast 
of Asia Minor. Immediately beneath lies the little 
harbour upon which the Government out of its scanty 
resources has spent several thousand pounds. To my 
mind the money might have been better expended 
elsewhere, since this haven is exposed to the fury of 
the northern gales, and notwithstanding its protecting 
moles no vessel of more than two hundred tons can 
enter it, even in calm weather. 

The acting Commissioner, Mr. Ongley, pointed out to 
me, at the base of one of the round towers against which 
the sea washes, a little window that to within the last 
year or two has been walled up. Access was gained to it 



182 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



by a ladder and the stones removed. Within, he said, 
was found a cell without visible communication with 
any other part of the castle, and in it the bones of 
a human being and those of a chicken. It is suggested 
that these remains belonged to some political prisoner, 
sent here, perhaps from Venice, to be walled up with 
the chicken. Of course under the circumstances he 
would eat the chicken, after which the rats ate him. 
I must add, however, that Major Chamberlayne, the 
Commissioner at Nicosia, who is perhaps the best 
authority in the island upon the mediaeval history of 
Cyprus, and who actually opened this dungeon, throws 
doubts upon the story. Myself, I do not quite believe 
it, for a reason which he did not mention but that 
appears to me to have weight. I am convinced that 
upon such an occasion the starving captive would not 
have left those bones. He would have crunched them 
up and swallowed them. Perhaps some corpse of which 
it was necessary to be rid in a time of siege was 
entombed here. Who can say ? At least that cell 
possesses considerable speculative interest. 

This fortress has known the shock of war, although 
I do not think it offered any notable resistance to the 
Turks after the fall of Nicosia and Famagusta. Here, 
in 1465, Charlotta was besieged for a whole year by her 
brother, James the Bastard, when she seems to have 
surrendered the place and fled with her husband, Louis, 
to Savoy. 

The coasts of Karamania, which are so clearly visible 
from Kyrenia and lie at a distance of about thirty miles, 
are not often visited by travellers, whose throats the 
inhabitants are apt to cut. They are reported to be a 
paradise for sportsmen, as ibex and other large game 
live upon the mountain ranges. For a sum of three 
shillings I purchased an enormous pair of the horns of 
one of these wild goats which had found their way across 
the straits. Ibex, I am told, have a habit when alarmed 



NICOSIA AND KYKENIA 183 



of hurling themselves off precipices and landing unharmed 
upon their horns. In the course of some excursion of 
the sort the owner of my pair has snapped off the point 
of one of them. Nature, however, healed the fracture, 
but the symmetry of the horn is spoiled. 

I did not enjoy this visit to Kyrenia so much as I 
expected, since, as is common in Cyprus, my wetting and 
chill on the previous day induced a touch of fever. It 
was mild, however, and yielded to a timely application 
of quinine. 

So back across the mountains to Nicosia and — a 
Book-Tea — a form of festivity which has just reached the 
ancient home of Cypris. Myself, I confess, I could have 
spared it, since of all varieties of intellectual exercise 
this is the hardest that I know. 

Nicosia is a place of many amusements. Thus they 
play golf there on a course of nine holes. It is odd to 
do the round with a gentleman in a fez acting as your 
caddie, and to observe upon the greens — or the yellows, 
for they are made of sand — Turkish ladies veiled in 
yashmaks engaged in the useful tasks of brushing and 
weeding. What in their secret hearts do those denizens 
of the harem think of us, I wonder ? Would not their 
verdict, if we could get at it, be " Mad, mad, my 
masters " ? But English folk would celebrate book-teas 
and play golf or any other accustomed game upon the 
brink of Styx. Perhaps that is why they remain a 
ruling race, for to do this it is necessary to preserve 
the habits and traditions of the fatherland, refusing per- 
sistently to allow them to be overwhelmed by those 
of any surrounding people. Witness the triumphant 
survival of the Hebrew. But that subject is large. 

The scene on this golf-course was quaint and pic- 
turesque. In front appeared the bold outline of the 
Kyrenia hills with rugged old Pentadactylon's five fingers 
pointing to a flaming, stormy sky, and behind rose 
the palms and minarets of eastern-looking Nicosia. Be- 



184 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



tween the two lay the wide plain across whose spaces 
from time to time wended strings of solemn camels, the 
head of each tied to the tail of its brother in front, or 
little groups of asses laden with firewood and other 
goods, a Cypriote seated on the last of them in a posture 
to be acquired only by centuries of inherited experience. 
The links themselves are by no means bad, though some- 
what limited and extemporary. Thus the bunkers are 
formed of artificial banks varied by an occasional stone 
wall, the other hazards consisting chiefly of breaks of 
asphodel and rocks cropping through the apology for 
turf. Upon one of these rocks alas ! I broke my host's 
best cleek. 

I had long been looking forward to paying a second 
visit to the museum at Nicosia, which consisted in past 
years of a few disorderly rooms crowded with miscellaneous 
antiquities. Having before I left England read reviews of 
an important new catalogue of the Cyprus Museum, I 
concluded that all this was changed. The deeper proved 
my disappointment. 

To begin with there is no custodian, so I was de- 
pendent on the kind offices of Major Chamberlayne to 
show me round. After long hammering we were let 
into the house by a girl, who said she would go upstairs 
and open the shutters of the rooms. On the ground 
floor beneath the archway, and in a kind of court, altars, 
remains of marble horses and chariots, tombstones, busts, 
unpacked crates of antiquities, some of them marked 
as having been forwarded years ago, were mixed in 
great confusion. The more precious objects were in a 
little chamber opening out of this archway, but it was no 
easy task to discover the keys which fitted the cases 
from which the trays had to be taken one by one and 
then replaced. The Cyprus share of the famous Enkomi 
treasures of which I have spoken we could not find any- 
where. It appears indeed that these objects are still 
locked up in some Government safe. Throughout the 



NICOSIA AND KYRENIA 185 



whole collection the story is the same. So far as the 
general public and Cyprus are concerned, it is practically 
valueless. For this sad state of affairs, however, the 
Government must not be blamed. They have not a 
single farthing to spend upon such things as relics of 
the island's past history, however important and in- 
teresting these may be. 

In this Cyprus collection, to my astonishment I came 
face to face with an old friend. Many years ago, when 
first I visited Famagusta, I feloniously did steal a certain 
cannon-ball which lay about among the ruins just where 
three centuries ago it had fallen from some Turkish gun. 
The ladies of our party followed my evil example and 
stole another. Both of these mementoes we bore back 
to Government House and there, with the effrontery 
of hardened offenders, openly displayed them. Now it 
appeared that not long before a special Governmental edict 
had been issued against the removal of ancient cannon- 
balls, and it was pointed out that his Excellency could not 
suffer his own guests to do those very things which he 
had forbidden to the public. Bowing to the inevitable 
I thereupon surrendered my cannon-ball, but the ladies 
refusing to be influenced by this pure logic, managed 
to retain theirs, which they afterwards presented to me, 
so that at this moment I hold it in my hand. 

What became of that cannon-ball — mine, I mean — I 
often wondered, and on this day so long, long afterwards, 
I found out. There, yes, there neglected in a dusty 
corner on the floor, in company with the noseless head 
of a Greek child and the fragments of a Phoenician pot, 
unhonoured and uncared for, lay the heavy missile that 
with so much labour I had borne away from Famagusta. 
There was no doubt about it, I could swear to that lump 
of iron in any court of law ; also it was the only one 
in the place, and evidently had been deposited here that 
the authorities might be rid of it. Moreover, by a strange 
coincidence the very gentleman whose official duty it had 



186 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



been to relieve me of the stolen property in the first 
instance, was now at my side. 

Life is full of coincidences. Who would have thought 
that the three of us, Major Chamberlayne, Cannon-ball, 
and I, would live to meet again thus strangely after 
so long a lapse of time and in so far off a land ? Sorely, 
I admit, was my virtue tempted, for while my guide was 
mourning over something out of place in a distant corner, 
I might easily have transferred the ball to my coat pocket, 
trusting to fortune and the strength of the stitching to 
get it away, and unobserved. But so greatly has my moral 
character strengthened and improved during the last 
decade and a half, that actually I left it where it was, 
and where doubtless it will remain until some one throws 
it on to the museum rubbish heap. 

The island of Cyprus is one of the few countries in 
the world that I have felt sorry to leave. Often I have 
thought that it would be a delightful place to live in, not 
in the towns, a frequenter of book-teas, but in solitude 
as a hermit upon some haunted hill among the shattered 
pillars of old cities, with vineyard slopes beneath and the 
sea beyond. Only I should like to be a rich hermit — to 
the poor that profession must be irksome — and then I 
would restore Bella Pais and see what the land could 
grow. A friend of mine did in fact turn anchorite in 
Cyprus, but I noticed that he always seemed to find it 
necessary to come home for his militia training, and 
when I re- visited his hermitage the other day, lo ! it was 
desolate. 

Fortunately the road from Nicosia to Limasol by 
which the traveller departs runs through the very 
dreariest districts of the island, and thereby eases the 
farewell. For three hours' journey, or more, on either 
side of it stretch bare, barren hills, worn to the grey 
bones, as it were, by the wash of thousands of years of 
rain and bleached in the fiery Cyprian sun. I daresay, 
however, that with care even the most unpromising of 



NICOSIA AND KYRENIA 187 



this soil would nourish certain sorts of trees, as probably 
it did in past ages. 

Then the denudation would cease, the earth grow 
green, the flood waters be held up and the former and 
the latter rain called down, until here too, as on the 
Kyrenia coast, the land became a paradise. 

And so farewell to Cyprus the bounteous and the 
beautiful. 



CHAPTER XIV 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 

Our journeyings in Cyprus finished, we sailed from 
Limasol at night. Next morning when I woke up 
early, our ship, a Messagerie boat, was already anchoring 
in the waters of St. George's Bay, and before us lay the 
busy city of Beyrout, the Berytus of the Phoenicians. 
Presently an emissary of the Beyrout branch of the 
house of Cook arrived on board and asked us if we had 
any revolvers, or cigarettes. We had both. 

" Give them me," he said, " and I'll see you through." 

Then it transpired that in this matter of revolvers 
there is little difference between the Turkish and the 
Cyprian governments. In a country where every peasant 
goes about his business with a double-barrelled gun slung 
across his shoulders, the respectable traveller may not 
pass a pocket-pistol through the customs. 

We left the ship with our belongings and rowed to 
the landing-quay. Then the fun began. Such shout- 
ing, such gesticulating, such struggles ! First, we were 
marched through a room where sat an aged Turk who 
stared at us sleepily. To him we protested that we had 
nothing, nothing ! with such vigour that the least ex- 
perienced might have guessed that we prevaricated. 
Then a minor Cook and his myrmidons hustled us 
through passages and gateways into the open street, and 
whispering mysteriously, " There is something wrong," 
left us and vanished. 

In due course it transpired the " something " was that 
our sleepy- eyed Turk, who was by no means so simple 

188 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 189 



as he appeared, had caught sight of the large revolver 
projecting from between the folds of a coat gracefully 
arranged to hide it by the artifice of Cook. Further, he 
had impounded that revolver, but as Cook, with admir- 
able promptitude and disregard of facts, informed him 
that we were sailing for Egypt in a day or two, he was so 
good as to promise that we could have it when we left. 
After this, thankful to escape so cheaply, we started for 
our hotel. 

That afternoon I hired a carriage to drive out to a 
spot about ten miles away, called the Dog River, and by 
the ancient Greeks, ZyJcos, or Wolf River. Here, in the 
days of fable, a huge stone dog sat upon a rock and 
barked loudly whenever an enemy drew near. Perhaps 
— this is but a suggestion — the statue was so constructed 
that the wind rushing down his throat made a noise like 
to that of a hound which bays. At the least he did in 
truth sit there, since lying prone in shallow water I 
myself saw his gigantic, headless shape, large as that of 
an ox or a horse. Now he barks no longer, but whenever 
the sea rises its waves moan over him. Henry Maundrell 
saw him also in 1697, for he says : — 

"In an hour or more, spent upon a very rugged way, close 
by the sea, we came to the river Lycus, called also, sometimes, 
Oanis, and by the Turks, at this day, Nahr Kelp. It derives its 
name from an idol in the form of a dog or wolf, which was 
worshipped, and is said to have pronounced oracles, at this 
place. The image is pretended to be shown to strangers at 
this day, lying in the sea with its heels upward. I mean the 
body of it ; for its oracular head is reported to have been broken 
off and carried to Venice, where (if fame be true) it may be 
seen at this day." 

The first mile or so of our drive was through Beyrout, 
for the East, a very prosperous-looking town, where every- 
body seems busy at his trade — carpentering, copper- 
fashioning, weaving, or dyeing. Most of the inhabitants 



190 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



are Christian, which accounts for this strange activity; 
at any rate, their women, some of them may be called 
pretty while young, go unveiled. The roads, however, 
are fearful; I have never seen worse out of Central 
America. In places, indeed, it was as much as two 
good horses could do to pull our carriage through the 
mud, while the holes into which the wheels dropped 
continually were deep and disconcerting. 

So soon, however, as Beyrout was left behind these 
same roads suddenly became excellent — no civilised turn- 
pike could be better. The change puzzled me greatly, but 
afterwards I discovered the reason. We had passed into 
territory over which the Mussulman rules in name alone. 
After the fearful massacre of the Christians at Damascus 
and elsewhere by the Druses, encouraged thereto by the 
Turks, came the French expedition of 1861. This dis- 
play of force, backed by the remonstrances of the Powers, 
obliged the unwilling Sultan to grant semi-independence 
to the Maronites, and to allow the establishment of an 
imperium in imperio, generally known as the Lebanon 
Government. Being Christian, affiliated to the Roman 
Church indeed, although they retain certain special 
privileges, since their priests have the right to read 
Mass in Syriac and to marry, these Maronites are in- 
dustrious and progressive. Hence the good roads, the 
honest administration, and the suggestive fact that pro- 
perty which lies within the territories of the Lebanon 
Government fetches, if sold, about five times as much 
as that of similar extent and character which has the 
advantage of bordering on Beyrout, but the disadvantage 
of groaning under the rule of the Moslem. 

Every inch of the rich land that lines this road is in 
high cultivation, a large proportion of it being planted 
with mulberry-trees, which are kept severely cut back, as 
the young shoots of two or three years' standing produce 
the richest crop of leaves. These mulberries are not 
grown for their fruit but only for the foliage, that feeds 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 191 



the silk- worms, which are perhaps the principal source 
of wealth in this district. Between these plantations lie 
patches of vines and other crops. 

Here the road was crowded with transport animals ; 
donkeys staggering along under the weight of two great 
planks; camels laden with mighty sacks of grain, and 
so forth. As we went I observed a farmer engaged in 
setting a number of young trees, to receive which the 
ground had been carefully trenched to a depth of over 
two feet. Finding it troublesome to throw up the soil 
from the bottom of the trench, labour doubtless being 
cheap in Syria, he overcame the difficulty in a very 
ingenious fashion. To the stem of his shovel were 
attached two thin ropes, each of them held by a man who 
stood upon the surface level. When the agriculturist 
below had piled the spade with earth, at a word the 
assistants above pulled, and, without any undue exertion 
on his part, up came the shovel and its contents. The 
plan is clever, yet it seemed to me somewhat wasteful to 
employ the muscles of three men to throw one spadeful 
of soil out of a hole not thirty inches deep. A Turk, 
however, would settle the question by planting the mul- 
berries in untrenched land, or more probably by leaving 
them unplanted altogether. 

For five or six miles our road ran on by the edge of 
the sea, till at length we reached our goal. Here a river 
or rather a wide torrent — that of the Dog — has in the 
course of unnumbered aeons cut for itself a path to the 
ocean between two bold, bare -shouldered mountains. 
This stream is, or was, crossed by a fine stone bridge, 
but the winter floods, coming down in their fury, have 
undermined its piers and swept away several of the 
spans. At present no attempt has been made to repair 
the wreck. 

Above us, to be reached by a few minutes' scramble, 
ran the remains of the old Roman, or mayhap Phoenician, 
road, cut in the face of the precipice. Here, graven deep 



192 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



upon the flat surface of the rock, are curious tablets, 
each of which marks the passage of some conqueror at 
different periods of the world's history. Altogether 
there are about a dozen of these inscriptions. The 
latest in date records the names of the French generals 
who occupied the land so recently as 1860; the earliest 
that of the Egyptian Pharaoh, whose standards shone in 
the Syrian sun before Solomon sat upon the throne of 
Judah; the sign manual of great Rameses, no less, for 
whose pleasure the Israelites moulded their strawless 
bricks from the mud of Father Nile. The Assyrian 
was here also, Sennacherib the king who flourished when 
Rameses had been some seven centuries dead, and others 
great in their day, whereof nothing now remains except a 
name and such monuments as these. Each conqueror as 
he trod these shores thus stamped his seal upon their 
cliffs, so that men unborn might learn the prowess of his 
arms. It was a poor and primitive expedient to avoid 
the oblivion which dogs even those at whose high-sound- 
ing titles whole nations shook, yet not altogether in- 
effective. At least it brings their exploits home to the 
minds of some few travellers thousands of years after 
those who wrought them have mingled their dust with 
that of the peoples whom they slaughtered. Will our 
daily press and voluminous records do more, or as 
much, for the conquerors and conquests of to-day? 
When the world has rolled along the path of another 
three thousand years some traces of these tablets may 
still remain, and with them traditions of the men who 
set them there. But who will remember, let us say, 
the Boer war and the generals that fought its battles ? 

The flowers that sprang in the crevices of this old 
roadway were beautiful and various. Doubtless the 
legions of Rameses and of Sennacherib trod such beneath 
their feet. The frail lily of the field is more immortal 
than the mightiest conqueror of the world. It serves to 
weave his crown and to deck his feasts awhile, but the 



BEYKOUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 193 



last triumph is not to him, for in his dust it flourishes 
eternally. 

That evening we went for a walk through the streets 
and suburbs of Beyrout, amusing ourselves by watching 
the children of the city flying kites in the strong wind, 
a pastime for which in Palestine they have a passion. 
These kites, which are beautifully made, and decorated 
with dozens of bright streamers, the lads manage with 
great skill, contriving even to make their playthings 
fight in the air. Also we examined the fishing-boats 
in process of construction upon the seashore. They are 
built roughly, but very strongly, the uprights and knees 
being fashioned of rudely-shaped pines. I imagine that 
the Phoenicians of thousands of years ago must have 
sailed the ocean in such vessels, if of somewhat larger 
tonnage. 

Beyrout is a land of flowers. Already I saw Banksia 
roses and Bougainvilleas in bloom, with many other 
creeping plants upon the houses round which the new- 
come martins dipped and wheeled. 

On returning to the hotel, a fairly comfortable place, 
whereof the dining-room was decorated with the boughs 
and cones of the cedar of Lebanon, now, I am sorry to 
learn, a scarce tree, we found the cavass from the British 
Consulate waiting with our tezkerehs. These are docu- 
ments of identification which the traveller in Syria is 
required to fill in, giving a full account of his personal 
appearance, age, height, parentage, and the rest, after 
which they must receive the official stamp of his consul. 
It is a curious fact, showing how little customs change 
in the East, that sundry of the earlier pilgrims mention 
the necessity of providing themselves with similar 
descriptive certificates. 

Thus Wilibald, who visited the Holy Land in a.d. 724, 
says, " Nobody is allowed to pass this place (Libanus) 
without letters of safe conduct, those who are without 
such letters are seized and sent to Tyre." 

N 



194 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Again, the monk Bernard the Wise, who travelled 
in 867, about 140 years later than Wilibald, mentions 
that at Bari " we obtained from the Prince of the city, 
called the Sultan, the necessary arrangements for our 
journey with two letters of safe conduct, describing 
our persons and the objects of our journey, to the 
Prince of Alexandria and to the Prince of Babylonia." 
Further on he says that on entering cities in the 
Holy Land the pilgrims were never allowed to leave 
them until they had " received a paper or impression 
of a seal." 

The same habit obtains to-day, where the tourist's 
tezkereh has to be produced and stamped by the officials 
of each town he visits. 

I do not think, however, that the English consuls 
have been much troubled in this matter during the 
present year, when, either because of the war, or for some 
other reason, but very few of their compatriots have 
visited the Holy Land. Of Americans, however, there 
are a good many. 

The news of the relief of Ladysmith reached Beyrout 
upon the first day of our visit. By the French element, 
which is important there, it was ill received, but the 
rest of the population, both Christian and Moslem, seemed 
pleased. Thus as I was reading the telegram which was 
pinned upon a wall, an old Turk clapped me on the 
shoulder, and, pointing to the cable, expressed his delight 
by pantomime. Indeed the individual Turk is generally 
a friend to the English, and a good fellow. Of the Pashas 
and the government so much cannot be said. The Mar- 
onites also appear to like us. When I was at the Dog 
River a young man, who could speak a little broken 
English, came up to me and asked for news of the war. 
I told him of the relief of Ladysmith, whereof I had 
already learned by private wire, at which tidings he 
seemed delighted. " Good people, English," he said, 
" good people ! No make poor men soldiers." Evidently 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 195 



my friend preferred the paths of peace, and in this 
country would have voted against conscription. 

That evening the sunset was beautiful. The sight 
of its colours falling and fading while the twilight 
deepened over the swelling snows of Lebanon, was one 
which I shall not easily forget. 

Beyrout is a city of which the stranger, without local 
interests, is apt to tire after the first few days. Indeed, 
when he has driven round by the American seminary, 
inspected the pigeon rocks, where there are no pigeons, 
and purchased lengths of camel-hair cloth, which English 
tailors afterwards find almost impossible to make up, 
there is really little left for him to do. Therefore I was 
not sorry when very early one morning we rose, paid our 
bills, and under the care of the fostering Cook, who, 
wonderful to relate, succeeded in recovering the revolver, 
embarked upon the khedivial steamer for Haifa, sixty 
or seventy miles away, whence we had arranged to com- 
mence our journey through the Holy Land. Fortunately 
the day was hot and fine, and Beyrout looked bright and 
beautiful in the rays of the morning sun as we steamed 
out of its harbour, although the Lebanon was half hidden 
in a haze. 

The collection of passengers on board was one of 
the most motley that ever I saw. Forward were many 
pilgrims travelling to Mecca, of whom presently. Aft, 
standing or sitting on the quarter-deck, were a party of 
American maiden ladies; Levantines in fezes; Turkish 
officers in rather shabby uniform ; a Maronite priest with 
a tall cap ; and four Turkish women wrapped in black 
robes, and wearing various-coloured yashmaks. In the 
case of the youngest and best-looking of the quartet, this 
veil was of a perfectly diaphanous material ; moreover she 
found it necessary to remove it from time to time in 
order to admire the view. The other ladies, who, to 
judge from their enormous size, must have been elderly, 
were more correct, and managed to study Lebanon 



196 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



through their yashmaks. But if they veiled their faces 
they showed not the slightest objection to the display of 
limbs which the female sex elsewhere conspires to hide. 
Thus the very stoutest of the family, for doubtless they 
shared the same harem, by the simple act of crossing 
them, revealed to the knee and higher the most gigantic 
pair of yellow- stockinged legs that it ever was my lot to 
contemplate. There she sat and mused, and there we 
stood and marvelled. Indeed my nephew, graceless 
youth, actually fetched a camera and photographed them. 
But, will it be believed, the modest instrument refused 
to act ! Out of all the plates brought home this one 
alone proved absolutely blank. 

At the invitation of the commander, Captain Peck, I 
went to sit upon the bridge, a coign of vantage whence I 
could study the pilgrims on the decks below. Among 
them was a party wearing astrakan caps, pious travellers 
from far Afghanistan. They were accompanied by a 
servant and seemed much cleaner in person than their 
fellow-passengers. Next to these a man was engaged in 
chanting his prayers in a monotone, and another in 
reading the Koran, also aloud. Further on sat a poet or 
story-teller repeating rhymes or tales to an audience that 
listened with more or less attention. Perhaps he pub- 
lishes in Kandahar. On the other side of the deck, in 
charge of an old woman, were several ladies of doubtful 
pasts, or presents — one of them almost good-looking — 
pilgrims, to what shrine I know not. Number three, tried 
by the motion of the vessel, rests her head upon the knees 
of number two, while number four smokes a narghile, 
and regards the follower of the Prophet at his devotions 
opposite, with an air of philosophical amusement. Cook- 
ing-pots, prayer-rugs, chatties of water, baskets of food 
and oranges, all crowded together amid the prostrate 
forms lying on the dirty deck, appropriately completed 
this various scene. 

About midday we ran past green-sloped hills, broken 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 197 



here and there by bays of yellow sand and stretches of 
orange gardens, where in bygone ages stood the altars of 
that 4 Ashtoreth 

tc whom the Phoenicians called 
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns ; 
To whose bright image nightly by the moon 
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs." 

Round this bay, doubtless, once rose the ancient Sidon, 
or its suburbs, backed by a spur of Lebanon, and in the 
hills behind lies its desecrated necropolis. The town, 
now a place without trade and of little importance since 
the Druse Emir Fakh-reddin filled up the southern 
harbour, like most of the forts and principal edifices of 
the Phoenicians, was built upon a promontory faced by a 
little island. From the northern end of this island runs 
a ridge or reef, protecting the north harbour. Doubtless 
the existence of this natural breakwater influenced the 
Phoenicians in choosing the site of the town, which in 
the fulness of time became so great a city. The ancient 
inhabitants of Sidon " Queen of Ships " were famous for 
their knowledge of the stars and powers of navigation 
after sunset. Even to-day it is not difficult to imagine 
her long trading galleys stealing out through the gap in 
the reef at night on their difficult and dangerous journey 
to the daughter colony of Carthage, and thence to Spain, 
Italy, Gaul, and Britain. 

Several sheiks clad in their picturesque Bedouin 
apparel boarded us here to make the pilgrimage to 
Mecca. Among them was an old man evidently of high 
position, since those who came to bid him farewell kissed 
his hand and face with great respect and affection. At 
one o'clock he walked aft near to where I was sitting, 
spread a prayer-carpet, and began to sing and mutter his 
devotions, making many prostrations, and from time to 
time touching the deck with his forehead. Then he 
took up his beautiful rug, shook it, and departed, leaving 
the vacant space to be occupied by another devotee. 



198 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



It was towards evening when Captain Peck, pointing 
to a spot which projected from a vast dim sweep of coast, 
said, " That is Tyre." Further, with a courtesy for which 
I hereby return him my thanks, he offered to take the 
vessel in as close as it was safe to do, that we might have 
a good view of this place of renown. I surveyed it with 
a curious and deep emotion. Behind the white houses 
lay long dusky-coloured hills, and as seen from that dis- 
tance — although in fact it rises some miles to the south, 
for I imagine that this is the mountain marked upon the 
maps as Tell Habesh — immediately to its rear appeared a 
tumulus-like eminence. Beyond this again the coast-line 
trends out to a sharp chalk-cliffed headland, known as the 
White Cape. 

Strangely dead and desolate in the fast-fading lights 
of a winter day, looked this fallen city backed by the 
far-off snows of Lebanon wrapping that barren and for- 
saken land in their gigantic winding-sheet. Lonesome, 
too, were the smooth dull sea whereon our own was the 
only sail and the monotonous shore upon which it broke. 
Behind the town, if so it can still be called, spreads a 
stretch of yellow sand. Once this was beneath the water, 
but Alexander the Great, when he besieged the city, built 
a causeway across the neck of sea out of the materials 
of the continental settlement known as Palsetyrus, that 
thereby he might come at the island forts. This cause- 
way was 60 feet wide by over 400 yards long; but since 
the conquerors age the sands have drifted over it, so that 
now island and coast are joined, and the ancient harbours 
have silted up. 

What a history has this place that in the beginning, 
as to-day, was called, not Tyre, but Sur, which means a 
rock. The Phoenicians built it, or perhaps a people who 
were before them ; Hiram (the contemporary of Solomon) 
increased and adorned it, Shalmenezer, Nebuchadnezzar, 
Alexander the Great, and Antigonus besieged and took 
it. Cleopatra received it as a gift from the princely 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 199 



Anthony. St. Jerome celebrated it as the richest and 
most lovely city of Phoenicia and the East. The Saracens 
occupied it, the Crusaders drove them out and held it for 
generations. Lastly, the Moslems retook it, and to this 
hour stamped it with their seal of ruin. It is sung of also 
by Isaiah and Ezekiel, who prophesied its woe. 

" Is this your joyous city whose antiquity is of ancient 
days ? " Well may the traveller ask that question of 
" the crowned city whose merchants are princes, whose 
traffickers are the honourable of the earth." In the old 
time, exalted by her pomp and wealth, Tyre said : — 

" I am a god, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the 
sea" and set her heart "as the heart of God." Therefore said 
the Lord God : " Behold I am against thee, Tyrus, and will 
cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causes 
his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of 
Tyrus and break down her towers : I will also scrape her dust 
from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a 
place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea : for I 
have spoken it, saith the Lord God : and it shall become a spoil 
for the nations. . . . And I will cause the noise of thy songs to 
cease ; and the sound of thy harp shall be no more heard. And 
I will make thee like the top of a rock : thou shalt be a place to 
spread nets upon ; thou shalt be built no more : for I the Lord 
hath spoken it, saith the Lord God. Thus saith the Lord God to 
Tyrus : Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall, when 
the wounded cry, when the slaughter is made in the midst of 
thee. . . . How art thou destroyed that wast inhabited of sea- 
faring men, the renowned city, which wast strong in the sea, she 
and her inhabitants. . . . ! " 

" A place for the spreading of nets ! " Behold there 
on the rocks, where stood her forts and palaces, the nets 
lie spread, drying for the use of those humble fishermen, 
in whose veins runs the blood of the merchants who were 
princes, and the traffickers who were the honourable of 
the earth. What a town it must have been in those days 
of the gorgeous Tyrian purple, when the mercenaries of 



200 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Persia, and of Lud, and of Phut were in her army, when 
" Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of 
the wares of thy making; they occupied in thy fairs 
with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, 
and coral and agate." And what a place it is now when 
the curse of the Almighty is at work within its shattered 
walls. 

The site of island Tyre, discrowned, dishonoured 
queen, fades into a low projection, a mere grey blot upon 
the eternal waters that once she ruled, and vanishes. 
Now before us lie the sands that Jesus trod, still shining 
yellow in the last low lights of evening. These were the 
sands also over which Paul passed when, after his sojourn 
in the city, the Spirit demanded of him " that he should 
not go up to Jerusalem." ..." And they all brought 
us on our way, with wives and children, till we were 
out of the city ; and we kneeled down on the shore and 
prayed. . . ." 

Then down fell the swift curtain of Eastern night, 
and presently, watching from the lofty bridge, I saw the 
red lamp of Acre abreast of us, and to our right the 
lamp of Carmel, and to the left and ahead of us the 
hundred lights of Haifa. So to Haifa we came at last 
over the sleeping seas and dropped anchor in her har- 
bour. Presently boats rowed out to greet us, and in 
one of them the cavass of the Consulate which had 
thoughtfully been warned by wire of our arrival by 
Mr. Drummond Hay, the British consul at Beyrout. 

He was a gorgeous-looking man that cavass. Tyre 
in all its glory could not have produced more splendid 
robes than those he wore, and calm command sat throned 
upon his reflective brow. I worship no dignity or pomp 
of place ; the sound of titles does not move me greatly, 
who am content to be a humble unit floating with a 
million, million others down the great sea of Time 
towards the night of Time's oblivion, thankful that I 
am allowed to do my work and to earn my wage as 



BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON 201 



well or as ill as I am able, according to the lights and 
the powers that are given me. Yet most of us are 
children at heart, and — I confess my weakness — I could 
wish to occupy some position in the world which would 
officially entitle me to retain the services of one or two 
— nay, let the truth out — of a whole half-dozen of 
Syrian cavasses. There is something about these magni- 
ficent creatures and their glorious and appropriate gar- 
ments that excites my fancy and its desires. I should 
like to walk to and fro guarded by such splendid 
servitors, to awake them from the solemn and majestic 
idleness wherein they spend their sunny days, saying to 
this one " Go," and watching him as he goeth, and to the 
other " Come," making sure that he cometh with speed. 
It would give me pleasure to despatch them to lead the 
wondering and awestruck traveller within my gates, even 
though I knew that presently, when I was out of sight, 
they would relieve the said traveller of a trifling fee to 
the value of five shillings, made, in the corresponding 
number of piastres, to seem a sum magnificent and 
worthy the acceptance of the great. 

The particular representative of this privileged class 
whose mien and appearance moved me to these reflec- 
tions, at once took us under his wing, and in the most 
open fashion added our revolvers to the collection of 
weapons of war which were bound about his middle. 
Well he knew, indeed, that no mere port official 
would dare to interfere with him ; no, not if he brought 
ashore a Maxim gun, pretending that it was for pur- 
poses of personal defence. So wide was that sheltering 
wing of his in truth that it covered quite a number 
of American ladies, who wisely tacked themselves on 
to our party, thereby avoiding all trouble with the 
Turkish customs. 

At the hotel we found our dragoman awaiting us. 
A first interview with a person so very important to the 
traveller's comfort during the time that he is in his 



202 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



charge as a dragoman, is, in a small way, momentous, 
since on the mutual impression then produced a great deal 
may depend. On this occasion it was satisfactory. 

The dragoman, David by name, was a Christian. 
Before he took to his present profession he had been 
a teacher in a school in J erusalem, and after that, dresser 
to the British hospital at Tiberias, an occupation which 
he abandoned through inability to bear the smell of the 
anaesthetics that he was continually called upon to 
administer. Here it was that he learnt to speak English 
so well, a very necessary qualification for his present 
trade. For the rest, he was slight and dark, about 
thirty years of age, a teetotaller, and I should say of a 
somewhat melancholy temperament. Perhaps the task 
of conducting parties round the Holy Land for years 
on years induces depression even in the dragoman who 
profits by them. 

With the help of David we settled finally upon 
our route. It was agreed that we should travel to 
Nazareth, from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee, from 
the Sea of Galilee to Mount Tabor, thence across the 
Plain of Esdraelon to Jenin and Nablus, and so round 
to Jerusalem, whence we proposed to visit Jericho and 
the Dead Sea. 

In arranging such a tour many things have to be 
considered — horses, weight of baggage, possible accom- 
modation, endurance of the travellers, the time at their 
disposal, and, above all, the weather and the condition of 
the roads, or what in Syria are called roads. These 
matters being at length determined after much dis- 
cussion, we parted for the night, David adjuring us to 
be up early on the following morning. 

So to bed, as old Pepys says. I for one was by no 
means sorry to get there. 



Our Cavalcade 




Mary's Well, Nazareth 



{See p. 209) 



i CHAPTEK XV 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 

On the following morning, after breakfast, which in 
hotels in the Holy Land consists of tea or coffee, two 
eggs, not much larger than those of bantams, and native 
jam, or honey from Lebanon, David arrived beautifully 
attired in a gold-laced garment, with a large revolver 
strapped on to him. He told us that the horses were 
come so we went out to look at them, and returned 
rather crestfallen. They were sorry brutes on which to 
ride for many days over rough and roadless country, 
although, like all entire horses, they held their heads 
well. In fact, the poor little animals, that under 
different treatment would have been serviceable, if 
second-class Arabs, had been starved and overworked. 
However, there were none others to be found. Haifa 
at any time is a bad place at which to obtain transport 
animals, but as it happened, the whole country had 
been swept of horses by a gigantic cheap American 
trip numbering over five hundred souls, with some of 
whom we were destined to become acquainted. There- 
fore our choice was that which tradition has ascribed to 
Mr. Hobson. It was these horses or none at all. 

I was asked to choose mine, and, guided by my 
African experience of many years ago when I had a 
good deal to do with horses, I passed over the larger 
and stronger- looking brown animal and selected a little 
grey scaffolding of a nag. In this it seems that my 
judgment did not fail me, since the brown proved to be 
a veritable death-trap, and I was heartily glad when my 

203 



204 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



nephew rode it into Nazareth without a bad fall or 
broken limb. My steed proved quite safe and stumbled 
not at all. Indeed the front half of him was excellent — 
a pretty little head that champed the bit and even tried 
to run away, an arched neck, a good shoulder, and a 
pair of sound and sure-footed fore-legs. But once past 
the line of the girths, oh ! what a falling off was there ; 
indeed he had no quarters to speak of, so wasted were 
they, and this hind pan of legs were very, very weak. 
Indeed it was by no means uncommon for him to drop 
so sharply on one or the other of them for five or six 
successive steps that at the end of a day's journey my 
spine felt as though it had been twisted. Especially 
did this happen going up or down steep hills. David's 
pony was smaller, and even more thin, but had the 
merit of being sure-footed and an excellent walker, a 
wonderful advantage in such a country where five-sixths 
of the road must be covered at a foot pace. Then there 
were two baggage animals, a horse and a niule, the 
former ridden by the muleteer who owned all the beasts, 
and the latter by his black assistant, both of them perched 
atop of the great piles of luggage and equipment. 

It was ten o'clock or so before the baggage was 
packed and loaded up and we had departed under a 
raking and deadly fire from the kodaks of the American 
ladies. Strange customers shall we appear in the photo- 
graphic albums of Pa. and Ma. and Kansas, U.S.A., or 
whatever other states our kindly acquaintances may 
adorn. 

Our road took us through the town of Haifa, once 
called Sycaminum. This place is beautifully situated 
upon the south shore of the Bay of Acre, but to-day 
more notable perhaps for the pleasant-looking houses of 
the German colony who dwell there — their very box- 
like primness delights the eye full fed with Syrian 
squalor — than for anything else. Having stopped to 
pay a short call upon the consul, where I saw my friend 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 205 



the cavass looking quite civilian and domestic in his 
morning clothes, we cantered through the narrow streets 
on to the road to Nazareth. 

This road is one of the few that exist in the Holy- 
Land. Like the new pier at Haifa, which cost several 
thousand pounds, and is quite unserviceable, it was con- 
structed for the especial use of the German Emperor on 
the occasion of his recent visit to Palestine. In fact 
his Majesty never used it as he abandoned the idea of a 
pilgrimage to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, preferring 
to toil along the coast to Jaffa and thence take the train 
to Jerusalem. When first completed, perhaps, it was a 
good road of a sort, but after two winters' rains it is — 
what may be imagined. Still carriages are dragged 
through its ruts and quagmires. 

On our right as we rode out of Haifa rose Mount 
Carmel, where the prophets were hid by fifty in a cave, 
and on our left ran a piece of the railway to Damascus 
which somebody began and never finished. Travelling 
on we crossed the wide plain and the brook Kishon, 
where the prophets of Baal were brought down to be 
slaughtered, I suppose that its waters might take their 
accursed blood and bodies out to sea. This plain is very 
marshy and we found considerable difficulty in making 
our way through one of the mud-holes on the road ; 
indeed the baggage animals had to go round up the side 
of a mountain. It was here that we met a number of 
mounted soldiers, sullen-looking, ill-clad fellows armed 
with rifles of a somewhat antiquated pattern. They 
were hastening into Haifa to attend the funeral of the 
Turkish governor, who had died suddenly during the 
night. 

The slopes of the Carmel range above us were clothed 
with wild carobs which nobody takes the trouble to graft 
and turn to profit. In the deep kloofs of these mountains 
also many wild bears are to be found. Crossing Kishon 
we struggled against the wind that tore seawards along its 



206 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



course, through a stretch of marsh starred with yellow 
lilies and purple orchis such as I find here in Norfolk, 
up that gorge whence Sisera is said to have advanced 
with his army before he met his death at the hands of 
the patriotic but treacherous Jael. At length, riding over 
park-like hills covered with beautiful oaks of a species 
that I do not know, just then breaking into green and 
tender leaf, we came to a spot commanding a view of 
the highest part of Carmel whither after the great 
drought Elijah sent his servant seven times to look 
across the ocean for signs of the coming rain. Below it 
and about three miles away on a lesser hill marked by a 
tree, is the very spot where took place the fearful conflict 
between the prophet and the priests of Baal, while 
beneath rolled the wide plain of Jezreel, dull and endless 
to the eye in the dense shadow of a rain-cloud. 

On the top of a ridge we stopped to lunch among 
the ancient oaks. The provision of this or any other 
meal caused us no anxiety ; we had nothing to do with the 
matter, being so to speak " taken in " at so much a head. 
The finding of food, and indeed of everything except 
wine and mineral waters, is the dragoman's affair under 
the contract, and he produces the same out of sundry 
bags which are tied upon the various animals. The 
liquor department, however, must be attended to by his 
principal. I mention the fact in the interest of any 
future traveller who may happen to read this book, for 
the matter is important. Water in Palestine is always 
doubtful, and frequently poisonous. To drink it may 
mean typhoid fever or dysentery. Therefore, it is most 
needful that there should be a proper supply of wine and 
Apollinaris, or, at least, of boiled water. The same thing 
applies in hotels. In whatever direction the tourist 
economises, let it not be in what he drinks. 

The spot where we picnicked was lovely. Amidst 
those primeval oaks and the water-worn rocks cropping 
from the soil around us the ground was carpeted, in fact, 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 207 



and not in name, with the most beauteous anemones, red 
and pure white in colour, that ever it was my lot to see, 
diversified on the more stony spots with clumps of flowering 
cyclamen. From all about, also, rose the curious chirp- 
ing sound of grasshoppers, while above us, in the blue 
depths between the threatening clouds, hovered kites and 
falcons. To our right lay the road where, through the 
trees, strings of camels were passing, among them more 
soldiers hastening to the pasha's funeral, and unveiled 
women riding upon asses, or staggering along beneath 
titanic loads of firewood. 

Presently, the restless David informed us that it was 
time to start. The horses, that had been tied to bushes 
without food to prevent them from rolling with their 
loads upon their backs, were bridled, and off we went 
along a fearful track of miles of mud sloughs (the 
German Emperor's new road), till at length we began to 
ascend the stony hills of Galilee. Sticking, floundering, 
and thrashing, we reached their crest, and far below us 
saw the village of Nazareth, a straggling Eastern town- 
ship situated upon the lower slopes of rounded, rocky 
hills, which at this season of the year are literally 
sheeted with blue iris and with cyclamen. 

Yes, there lay Nazareth, the holy spot, that like 
thousands of other pilgrims in every generation, for years 
I had desired to see. How is it possible for even the 
most cynical and faithless to look upon that place save 
with a heart of deepest reverence ? Discard the war 
of sites, and that worse war of the quarrelling sects. 
Let the loud speech of arguing travellers pass from 
your ears, and remember only that this is Nazareth, 
the place where He lived who has influenced our world 
most profoundly of any of its sons. Surely we should 
consider it in this spirit, and in no other. Look, there 
in a hollow of the hills the ploughman drives his oxen ; 
there the sower goes forth to sow; there a fig pushes 
its first leaves, showing that summer is nigh. Yonder 



208 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



in the wayside shop, also, the carpenter plies his trade, 
and at our feet bloom the painted lilies of the field. 
Every stone of these mountains, from which on many 
a day Christ must have watched the dawn begin to 
burn upon the plains of Jezreel, every fertile fold of 
those valleys were familiar to His eyes. He loved them, 
we may be sure, as even we common men love the natural 
objects that present themselves about the home where 
we were bred, only, doubtless, more intensely, more 
purely, with a deeper insight and a truer imagination. 
As a lad, perhaps like yonder child, the Saviour herded 
sheep and goats among these starting rocks, to while 
away the time, plucking the cyclamen and iris, and 
watching the flocks of finches seek their food among 
the thistles. As a man He may have worked those 
ancient ploughlands, taking His share of the simple 
labours of the family to which He belonged. In short, 
within this circle that the sight commands, for thirty 
years or more the Almighty dwelt on earth, acquiring 
in an humble incarnation one side of that wisdom which 
has changed the world. Here is the master fact that 
makes this perhaps the most holy ground in the entire 
universe, and, in its face, what does it matter which 
was the exact site of the Annunciation or of the shop 
of Joseph ? 

Nazareth lies in a basin, and its white houses run 
up the slopes of the surrounding hills. The soil in the 
sheltered valleys must be fertile, since here are groves 
of figs and olives hedged with great fences of prickly 
pear. Probably, omitting certain modern buildings in 
western style, the appearance of the little town looked 
at from a distance is not dissimilar to that which it 
presented in the time of our Lord. At least, the country 
must be absolutely the same, even down to the very 
rocks which lie by the wayside. The population also, 
both in dress and person, perhaps may not have varied 
much, although some writers think that it has received 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 209 



a strong dash of white blood, I cannot say upon what 
evidence. Certainly, however, I saw some children that 
were quite fair in colouring, but, as St. Antoninus, writing 
at the beginning of the seventh century, mentions the 
beauty of the women of Nazareth, it is obvious that 
this, at any rate, is not due to an admixture of the stock 
of the Crusaders. To this day that beauty is remarkable, 
for I observed it myself, and it was curious to reflect 
that among the people whom the traveller meets in 
Nazareth are, very possibly, some of the descendants 
of the brethren of the Lord removed from them only 
by the stepping-stones of fifty or sixty short human 
generations. This seems the more likely, as I cannot 
discover that the inhabitants of the township were ever 
slaughtered out wholesale, or carried away into captivity. 

Many sites are shown in Nazareth, among them two 
of the actual spot of the Annunciation and a cave or 
cistern said to have been the Virgin's kitchen. Then 
there is the workshop of Joseph, the stone table upon 
which our Lord is reported to have eaten with His disciples 
both before and after the Resurrection, whereof, how- 
ever, nothing was heard before the seventeenth century, 
and the synagogue where He taught, a small building 
no longer in the hands of the Jews. Of the authen- 
ticity of any of these relics or localities nothing is to 
be said, except that obviously they cannot all be right. 
Nothing except this — that here was the home of Mary, 
and here the Saviour lived for thirty years. What more 
can be needed ? 

One spot there is, however, that He must often have 
visited as child and man, for there is no other_ wateiL 
in Nazareth — the spring called Mary's Well. This 
gushes out beneath an arch which, although ancient 
enough, has, I suppose, been built, or rebuilt, several times 
since the day of our Lord. Here in the morning and the 
evening come the women of Nazareth with their children 
to fetch the household supply of water in narrow-necked 

o 



210 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



earthenware pitchers or chatties, which they bear upon 
their heads. Some, I am sorry to say, are beginning 
to replace these ancient and graceful vessels with square- 
shaped paraffin tins. Evidently this spring is the favour- 
ite gossiping-ground of the community, for while the 
children play about outside, or upon the roof of the 
arch, their mothers and sisters wash their feet in the 
overflow waters, and chatter away to each other of the 
news or scandal of the hour. So it would always have 
been. Hither day by day Mary must have come bearing 
the empty pitcher balanced sideways upon her head and 
leading the infant Jesus by the hand. Here, too, in 
manhood, when weary with toil in the summer heat, 
Christ may often have sat at even and perhaps have 
taught those who lingered round the fountain. 

This well lies on the outskirts of Nazareth, so that a 
few minutes' walk from it takes the visitor into the 
country. The flowers that I noticed here were anemones, 
ranunculi just showing for bloom, a variety of wild orchis 
with which I am unacquainted, cyclamen, blue iris (in 
sheets), asphodel, and, about a mile out of Nazareth, a 
single patch of English daisies. The birds in addition 
to the usual crows and falcons were the new-come 
swallows, the common sparrow that here seems to build 
in crannies of the walls, and the beautiful goldfinches of 
which I saw flocks numbering as many as thirty or fifty. 
I have never seen the goldfinch pack like this in England, 
perhaps because it is comparatively rare. 

On arrival we found our inn crowded with a portion 
of the countless American company who had absorbed all 
the horses in Palestine and were now on the way back 
to Haifa where their vessel lay. Their conductor who, 
as I suppose, to make himself more easily visible to the 
items of his vast troop, was clad in flowing Eastemjrobes, 
a kindly and very agreeable member of the American 
nation, told us a moving tale which suggests that such 
a post is no sinecure. He took his flock, or some of it, 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 211 



to inspect, I think, that ancient roll of the Samaritan law 
which is kept in the synagogue at Nablus. Here, when 
the kohen was not looking, one of them tore a corner off 
the manuscript. The theft was detected and complaint 
made. Thereupon my friend the conductor summoned 
the party and addressed them upon the iniquity of such 
Ian act in terms so moving that the conscience of the 
spoiler was worked upon with such effect that he restored 
the missing fragment. 

" When, however," continued the conductor, " on the 
very next day I saw that same fellow sitting upon the 
capital of a fallen marble column and smashing the 
carvings off it with a hammer, well, sir, I assure you 
that I never felt more like knocking a man down in my 
life. And, sir, he was a minister ! " 

Let us hope, by the way, that it was the copy of 
the ancient Pentateuch, which is frequently shown to 
travellers as the original, that was mutilated by this 
pious person. Apropos of the above story an American 
lady told me at Jerusalem that she met the same party 
in Egypt and at one time saw a whole collection of them 
— I think she said eight or ten — seated upon the head 
; of the sphinx and engaged, every one, in trying to knock 
fragments from it with stones. She added that she had 
never felt ashamed of her countrymen before. 

This reminds me of a still more heinous story — I do 
not vouch for it — which in Cyprus I was told of a certain 
traveller. The traveller, a man of practical mind, visited 
a famous shrine where a holy lamp had been kept burn- 
ing for five, and as some said, for seven hundred years. 
An ancient monk showed him the lamp. "Yes, noble 
Pilgrim," he said, " I have watched it for sixty years and 
the good father who was before me, he tended it for 
seventy-one, so that the everlasting flame has had but 
two guardians in a hundred and thirty years." 

* And before that ? " asked the travelFer. 

" Before that, noble Pilgrim ? Ah ! we do not know. 



212 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



All we know, for the books show it, is that the ever- 
lasting flame has not been out for five hundred years ; 
it is said indeed for eight hundred, but that is tradition. 
Here is a copy of the book — would his Excellency like 
to see it" — and the monk turned to reach down the 
volume. 

" Never been out ? " Puff. " Well," added the tra- 
veller reflectively, " any way I guess that it is out now ! " 

When this gentleman — I mean, not the practical 
traveller, but the manager of the American caravan — 
whose name I regret to say I cannot remember, heard 
of our plight about horses, most kindly he promised to 
send two of the best he had to meet us several days later 
on the top of Mount Tabor. The animals, he said, were 
engaged to return to Jerusalem, and might as well carry 
us there as not. So we parted, but alas ! as shall be 
told in its place, though through no fault of his, we never 
saw those horses. 

As no other steeds were obtainable we started for 
Tiberias on our own, my nephew changing his brown nag, 
however, which on three or four occasions had nearly 
fallen with him, for a wretched but sure-footed little rat 
of a baggage pony, that if not walking could only travel 
at a jerky trot. The muleteer who owned him declared 
that the brown horse was perfectly right, only a little 
stiff, and having strapped the luggage on to its back, 
proceeded to show his faith by mounting on the top. 
At the first mud-hole I heard a scuffle behind me, and, 
looking round, to my secret joy, saw the poor brute on 
its nose and his owner in the mire. After this he dis- 
mounted, and drove it through all bad places. 

Passing up and over the long hill beyond Nazareth, 
we saw Saffuriyeh below us, which is the Sepphoris of 
Josephus, once the capital of Galilee, and, after the 
destruction of Jerusalem, the seat of the great Sanhedrim. 
Leaving this village on our left we rode across more steep 
hills to the valley of Kafr Kenna, which is believed to 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 213 



be the Cana of that marriage feast where the water was 
turned to wine. Beneath us lay the mud-built hamlet, 
looking much as it must have done when our Lord 
walked down to it with His mother to be present at 
the wedding, and on the road thither the spring from 
which the water would have been drawn that was made 
wine. Here, as at Nazareth, we found a number of 
women and children engaged in carrying water from 
the well to the village. 

Riding on between hedges of prickly pears we came 
to a Greek church, the traditional site of the miracle, 
although that is disputed by the Latins. Built into the 
walls of this church, which, when we entered it, was being 
used for the purposes of a school, were two stone measures, 
capable, I should say at a guess, of holding five or six 
gallons apiece. These are shown as some of the actual 
vessels that held the water which Christ turned into 
wine. Whether they are the same is more than doubt- 
ful, but at least they appear to be of the pattern and 
period, and have been exhibited for many generations. 

Leaving Kenna we rode by execrable roads, towards 
what is alleged to be the Hill of the Beatitudes, where 
the Sermon on the Mount was delivered, although, of 
course, there is a rival, and, to my mind, more probable 
site, in the neighbourhood of the ruins of Capernaum. 
This mountain, which is named Karn Hattin, is a lonely 
hill standing in a great plain remarkable for the extra-! 
ordinary beauty and variety of its wild flowers. In 
places, especially under olives on old cultivated ground, 
the earth was one pink flush, produced by thousands of 
a small, many-headed bloom, with which I am not 
acquainted. Elsewhere it was quite blue with a gorgeous 
giant vetch, or lupin, that grows among springing corn, 
while everywhere appeared iris and anemones, many in 
this place of a magenta hue mixed among the commoner 
whites and scarlets. Probably, on account of its size, 
this lupin is, I find, not included in the delightful and 



214 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



interesting little book, " Wild Flowers from Palestine," 
gathered and pressed by the Rev. Harvey Greene, B.D. 

It was strange to look at that desolate and untenanted 
mountain, and reflect that here upon its slopes — for the 
question between this and the rival site a few miles 
away at Capernaum, is purely a matter of opinion — may 
have sat those multitudes to whom were spoken the 
words which will echo through the world for ever, con- 
centrating as they do the whole body of the Christian 
law. I believe it is admitted that this immortal and 
transcendent sermon was preached in the spring-time, 
and whether or no its sentences were utterecT among 
these rocks, certainly the flowers blooming in such pro- 
fusion about the place seem to bring home to the mind 
with new force and vividness those sayings which begin : 
" Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." That 
other saying also, " Behold the fowls of the air, they sow 
not neither do they reap nor gather into barns," might 
well have been inspired by the sight of the flocks of storks 
which at this season visit the plains about Mount Tabor, 
and may perhaps have been wandering to and fro within 
sight of Jesus as He preached. The greatest genius that 
has adorned the world would naturally have pointed His 
morals with convincing similes taken from the life, 
animate and inanimate, which presented itself about 
Him and must therefore come home to the mind of 
every listener, however ignorant or obtuse. Indeed, in 
the case of either site, this reflection applies equally. 

It was upon this flowery mead on July 4, 1187, 
that the great Saladin shattered the strength of the 
Crusaders. The Christians were fighting with the re- 
puted true Cross itself set up to inspire them, around 
which, wrote Saladin, " the Franks flew like moths 
round light." Says the Mussulman writer : " It was 
then that the sons of Paradise and children of fire 
fought out their terrible quarrel ; the arrows sounded 
in the air like the noisy flight of birds; the water of 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 215 



swords, the blood of arrows spouted out from the bosom 
of the melee and covered the earth like the waters 
of rain." 

The Christians were driven back upon the hill of 
Hattin, and there, victims to burning thirst and the 
swords of the Saracens, they perished by thousands. 
" I saw," writes the secretary of Saladin, " the hills, 
the plains, the valleys covered with their dead bodies ; 
I saw their colours abandoned and soiled with blood 
and dust ; I saw their heads struck off, their members 
dispersed, and their carcases piled up like stones." 

Next day the Templar knights and those of 
St. John who still lived, were brought before the 
Sultan, and to each of the Emirs and doctors of the 
Law he gave his royal permission to butcher an un- 
armed Christian. 

Such is the story of the fall of the Cross and 
the triumph of the Crescent at this battle of Hattin, 
sad enough reading even to the Christian of to-day. 

Before we reached the mountain we met, trailing 
across the plain for a mile or over, some two hundred 
of that band of American travellers with whom we had 
become acquainted at Nazareth. They were all mounted, 
and, as we approached, certain of them greeted us with 
facetious cries of Baksheesh, stretching out then hands in 
imitation of Arab beggars. In those surroundings to 
my taste the joke seemed out of place. 

Their gathering was motley, including, as I noticed, 
a good many ministers of different denominations. Its 
most striking feature, however, was afforded by the 
ladies of the party. Nearly all of these, even those 
who were provided with women's saddles, rode straddle- 
legged, after the fashion of men, a sight which I do 
not remember to have seen before except among peasants 
in the far North. The general effect struck me as 
inelegant and even unseemly. Their attire also was 
in some instances peculiar ; thus, one young lady 



216 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



was clothed in an ordinary skirt much rucked up, and 
a pair of enormous Syrian top-boots. Another, although 
the day was warm and dry, wore a shiny macintosh 
which also had ascended in obedience to natural laws. 
One fine-looking girl, however, sat her pony, a spirited 
Arab, like a centaur. I never saw any one with 
a closer or a better grip of a horse, and I imagine 
that wherever she came from she must have broken 
many a colt. But perhaps these criticisms are born 
of the merest prejudice. In every department of life 
it is nowadays easy to grow old-fashioned. 

The Americans vanished and the reputed Mount 
of Beatitudes receded, till at length, riding to the top 
of a ridge, we saw far beneath us the blue lake of 
Galilee, sparkling in the sunlight and surrounded by its 
immense circle of green hills. 

" Look," said the dragoman, David, pointing to a 
white speck on the north shore of the sea, " there is 
Capernaum ! " 

That — Capernaum, the great and flourishing city 
that was " exalted unto Heaven," that white dot— a 
monastery, as they say inhabited but by a single priest. 
And the others — Chorazin and Bethsaida ? The same, 
a desolation. Not even a monastery here, nothing but 
stones and some Bedouin tents which at this distance we 
could not discern. 

Then we began the descent. It reminded me of that 
which once I made to one of the most striking and 
desolate places in the world, the gloomy rift of Thing- 
Vellir, where a thousand years ago the aristocratic 
republic of Iceland held its stormy and blood-stained 
parliaments. Now, after a long scramble down steep 
slopes of turf, to cut corners in the abominable road, 
of a sudden the city came into view. Tiberias is a 
crowded town set upon the shores of the great lake, 
surrounded with a crumbling wall and commanded by 
a fort in the last stage of decadence. The very arch 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 217 



beneath which we entered now consists of a single 
span of tottering stones. Indeed, it is marvellous that 
these have not long ago fallen upon the head of some 
unlucky passenger. 

We went to our hostelry, a tidy place kept as usual 
by Germans, and off-saddled there. After refreshing 
ourselves with tea and oranges, of which after our long 
hot ride we stood much in need, we set out to explore 
Tiberias, the abode, according to the natives, of the King 
of all the Fleas. 

Heavens ! what a filthy place was that. The king 
of all the stenches must dwell there also. The bazaars 
are narrow and foul beyond conception ; along some 
of them I could only pass with a handkerchief held 
before my face. Down the centre of these pestilential 
streets flow gutters full of every beastly refuse ; there too 
sit and wander the population of Tiberias. As I had 
been informed that this city was for the most part 
occupied by Jews, I was curious to see them, thinking 
that upon their native soil we should find repre- 
sentatives of the race more or less as it was when it 
defied the Roman eagles. I was destined to disappoint- 
ment. Here were no hawk - eyed, stern - faced men 
such as I had pictured. Here even was no Hebrew 
as we know him, strenuous, eager, healthy, and cosmo- 
politan. 

Far different are those Jews, for the most part of 
Russian or Polish origin, who dwell in Tiberias. At a 
little distance in their dressing-gown-like robe it is not 
easy to say whether individuals are men or women. 
Indeed, even when studied face to face their aspect is 
singularly sexless. Their complexions are curiously pallid 
and unwholesome, while the hair of the men, often of a 
burning red, is arranged in two thin curls, which hang 
down oilily on either side of the forehead in front of the 
ears, like spare ringlets from the chevelures of our great- 
aunts. I asked David, who had dwelt among them for 



218 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



years, what this curious-looking folk did for a living. He 
replied — 

" Oh ! they just sit about." 

So far as I could learn this seems to describe the 
facts, but I understand that the means to sit about on 
are, for the most part, subscribed by charitable Hebrews 
in Europe and elsewhere. Many of the men are, how- 
ever, engaged in a study of the Talmud, an occupation 
for which Tiberias is traditionally famous. 

When I add that, whatever the season, they wear tall 
black hats and skin capes ; that some of the female 
children look pretty, though not strong; and that the 
adults, or individuals among them, are not averse to 
driving a trade in doubtful antiquities, it is all that I 
have to say of the Jews of Tiberias and their noisome 
habitations. 

First, David led us to a Greek monastery, in the 
yard of which stands a vaulted building used as a 
rubbish place, said to be part of that palace occupied 
by the Sanhedrim after it was driven from Sepphoris. 
Thence, passing down more dreadful alleys — what would 
happen if they got the plague in them ? — we emerged 
to the south of the town and walked along the road 
which runs to the hot baths. Here, as the ruins that 
lie on every hand bear witness, was the site of R^man 
Tiberias, built by Herod just before the mission of our 
Lord. The Saviour seems, however, never to have 
entered it, perhaps because it was a purely foreign city. 
On the cave-pierced hill above, set there no doubt to 
catch the cool evening breezes, is said to have stood the 
palace of Herod, while jutting into the lake are the 
wrecks of ancient walls and towers. The road itself 
runs through some temple, for in its centre, worn to the 
level of the pathway, stands the base of a marble column, 
and all about are other such remains. Having inspected 
them, but stopping short of the hot springs, we returned 
to Tiberias. On this occasion we kept outside the 



NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS 219 



walls to avoid the smells, and were followed to our 
lodging by Jews who wished to buy the photographic 
camera and to sell us glass dug from the Roman tombs. 
/* I omitted to state that in one of the bazaars I saw 
a man hawking sparrows. He offered them for sale 
by twos, each brace tied to a string. I worked out the 
price asked as well as I was able, and, comparing it with 
the value of money in our Lord's time, found that it was 
about equivalent to the Roman farthing that was paid 
for two, or the two farthings for five, a bird being thrown 
in, doubtless, to the customer who took the full number. 
Truly, such things change little in the East. Truly, 
also, the sight of them makes much clear to the mind 
which before it has failed to grasp. That is why a visit 
to the Holy Land is in itself an education to people 
who undertake it in the right spirit, and do not suffer 
themselves to be overwhelmed by discomforts and other 
annoyances. Without seeing the country itself there is 
much of the Old Testament which it is difficult to 
understand. The same may be said of the New, if in a 
less degree. 

Thus, to take a very minor but still interesting illus- 
tration, the allusion in Matthew vi. to the " grass of the 
field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the 
oven," always puzzled me, as I could not understand 
why grass should be used for the heating of ovens. 
Nor did commentaries help me much. Thus the Inter- 
national Teachers' Edition of the Bible, the best and 
most useful that I know, says that grass of the field as 
spoken of here "indicates all herbs of the field." In 
Cyprus and the Holy Land, however, I observed donkeys 
and women laden with great bundles of a grey prickly 
growth, the stalks of wild thyme, I believe, though of 
this I am not certain, and inquired its purpose. Then 
I learned that this growth is invariably used by the 
bakers to heat their ovens. It has the property of 
burning with a clear, hot flame, but without smoke, and 



220 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



therefore leaves the interior of the oven, after the ashes 
have been drawn, clean and fit to receive the bread. 
Can any one doubt that this was the "grass of the 
field " that is " cast into the oven " to which the 
Saviour alluded, or that He drew His illustration 
from the still common sight of the passing women 
bearing it in bundles on their heads to be sold in the 
cities of the Lake ? 



f 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 

At night the Sea of Galilee is very beautiful. The 
crescent moon sinking to the horizon, the myriad stars 
reflected from the breast of the water, the soft distant 
line of the opposing hills — where of old dwelt the 
Gergezenes — the hush of the heavy air, the brooding 
calm broken only by barking pariah dogs ; all these 
compose a picture and leave impressions that the mind 
cannot easily forget. 

Tiberias is a hot town, so hot that, as the German 
hotel-keeper told me, it is impossible for many months 
of the year to sleep except upon the roof. Even now 
in the spring the thermometer must have stood at 
nearly eighty degrees in the shade, and the sun was 
so powerful that I was glad to wear a bath-towel as 
a puggaree. Also on the first night that we passed 
there we were favoured with another evidence of the 
genial nature of the climate. My bed was protected 
with gauze curtains, which I thought were drawn y^ith 
care, but about two' in the morning I awoke to find 
myself the centre of a kind of hive of mosquitoes. 
The next hour we employed in somewhat ineffective 
hunting and in doctoring the lumps with native brandy. 
If, as science has demonstrated of late, the bite of a 
common swamp mosquito conveys malarial fever, what 
disease ought to follow that of those members of the 
family which have been nurtured on the filth-heaps of 
Tiberias ? I confess that having recently read a good 
deal about the subject, the problem quite alarmed me. 

221 



222 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Leaving these possibilities aside, however, I never re- 
member meeting mosquitoes more venomous, or that left 
larger lumps with a keener itch, than those of Tiberias, 
except, perhaps, some with which I made acquaintance 
on the rivers of Chiapas, in Central America. 

When we rose on the following morning I was dis- 
mayed to find that although the wind was not really 
strong, the sea upon the lake was so considerable that 
it seemed doubtful whether we should be able to sail 
to the mouth of the Jordan. This is a voyage which the 
Tiberias boatmen absolutely refuse to make in bad or 
squally weather, knowing that now, as in the time of 
our Lord, it is easy to be drowned on the Lake of 
Galilee, where a very violent and dangerous sea gets 
up with extraordinary swiftness. However, at last our 
men made up their minds to try it, and off we started 
to that Greek monastery which we had visited on the 
previous afternoon, where the boat awaited us. 

I was not quite prepared for what followed. Arriving 
at the landing-place we saw our boat pitching and rolling 
furiously about twenty yards from the beach, while be- 
tween us and it, breakers, large enough to constitute a 
respectable sea upon the Norfolk coast, rushed shore- 
wards in quick succession. 

" Might I ask how " I began, but before I got 

any further two stalwart Arabs, their garments tucked 
beneath their armpits, amid a chorus of frantic yells 
and objurgations from every one concerned, seized me, 
and, hoisting me most insecurely on to their shoulders, 
plunged into the foam. The moment was ill-chosen, 
for just then arrived a series of bigger waves than any 
that had gone before. We were brought to a stand- 
still ; we shook, we bowed, we rocked to and fro, while 
now my legs and now other portions of my frame dipped 
gently in the deep. I was certain that all was lost, and 
that presently, in company with those infernal boatmen, I 
should be wallowing at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee, 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 223 



spoiling my watch and my temper. Suddenly they 
made a last despairing rush, however, the waves surging 
round their very necks, and reached the boat, into which 
I scrambled and rolled I know not how. Afterwards, 
profiting by my experience, which taught them how to 
sit and what to sit on, also by the fact that they were 
lighter weights, my nephew and David followed me on 
board, I regret to state without the ducking their loud- 
voiced mockery of my woes deserved. However, before 
another hour was gone by I had the laugh of both of 
them. 

When all were aboard we began our journey, head- 
ing for the mouth of Jordan, which, at a guess, lies 
eight or nine miles away. As there was no wind that 
would serve us, furling the sail, we depended on our 
oars. The sea was very rough, quite as rough as I cared 
for in this small boat, although she was staunch and 
good, having been brought here from Beyrout for the 
especial comfort of the Emperor of Germany, who, as it 
chanced, never visited the place. The continual tossing 
soon proved too much for David, who collapsed into the 
bottom of the boat, and lay there — a very dilapidated 
dragoman. My nephew, who had been an oar at college, 
volunteered to assist in the arduous and continual labour 
of rowing, but, to the joy of the boatmen, about whose 
style he had been sarcastic, did not get on quite so well 
as he expected in those unaccustomed waters. The 
voyage was lonesome, for on all that great expanse of 
sea, once the home of fleets, I could see no other craft. 
Indeed, we were not sorry when at length the weather 
began to moderate, and occasional gusts of favouring 
wind enabled us to use our sail at times. 

Still, the experience was interesting, for ploughing 
thus through the stormy waves it seemed easy to enter 
into the feelings of the Apostles — who also were heading 
for Capernaum — when about this spot they were struck 
at the fall of night by the squall that nearly swamped 



224 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



them. What a sight must these waters have witnessed 
in that hour, when suddenly as they struggled forward, 
doing their best after the fashion of the skilled boatmen of 
the lake, to keep head on to those hissing seas, they per- 
ceived the Divine figure gliding over their crests towards 
them. And again in that hour when upon another 
occasion " the ship was covered with the waves : but He 
was asleep, and His disciples came to Him and woke 
Him, saying, 'Lord, save us: we perish.' And He 
saith unto them, ' Why are ye fearful, ye of little faith ? ' 
Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and 
there was a great calm. But the men marvelled, saying, 
' What manner of man is this, that even the winds and 
the sea obey him ? "' To read these passages, as it was my 
good fortune to do, while tossing tempestuously upon the 
lake of Galilee, the exact site of the occurrences they 
describe, and under circumstances not dissimilar in kind, 
although different in degree, is to learn much. So slug- 
gish is our imagination that to appreciate such matters 
rightly and in full, actual experience of their like is 
necessary. Here that befell us. 

After some hours of rowing the sea went down in the 
sudden fashion which is common upon Galilee, and by the 
help of a favouring draught of wind we came at last to 
where the muddy waters of Jordan run with turbulence 
into the lake, bringing down much ctthris, and raising 
large, backward- curling waves. For a little while we 
sailed up the river, studying the black camel-hair tents 
of the Bedouin encampment upon its banks, and the 
Arabs, men, women, and children, who loitered round 
them. Then we put about and rowed through perfectly 
calm water past the stony desolate site that now goes by 
the name of Tel Hum, where it is believed the ancient 
city stood. At any rate here was an ancient city, though 
whether this was Capernaum or Bethsaida is a matter of 
dispute. My own theory, which I suggest with all 
humility, is that both Bethsaida by its side and Chorazin 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 225 



above, may in practice have been suburbs of the main 
town of Capernaum. At least it is certain that in the 
old days all this country, now an utter waste, was 
very densely populated, and it must have been 
difficult to know exactly where one city ended and 
the next began. 

Passing the spot called Heptapegon, or Seven Springs, 
which many authorities believe to be the place of the 
miraculous feeding of the five thousand recorded by St. 
Mark, we reached the monastery of the German Catholic 
Palestine Society, and went to lunch in the hospice, a 
neat and cool building with a pleasant garden. After we 
had finished our meal we had the pleasure of being in- 
troduced to the reverend father in charge, who I think lives 
here alone. His name is Zephyrin Biever, a fine-looking 
man advanced in life, of courteous manners and high 
intelligence. He complained bitterly of the treatment 
which he had suffered at the hands of those tourists whom 
we met riding from Tiberias to Nazareth, saying that they 
came in scores, took possession of the hospice, and ate 
there without taking the trouble to call upon him or 
return him thanks, direct or indirect. Further he de- 
clared that they lay about on his furniture with their 
dirty boots, soiling it so much that he had been obliged 
to send all the covers to be washed. Indeed, the 
reverend gentleman was truly angered in the matter, and 
as it seemed to me not without some reason. It is a pity 
that travellers should show such a lack of consideration 
towards their hosts, as it makes difficulties for those who 
follow them. Father Biever stated that he would admit 
no more tourists of this stamp, but I hope that in time 
his charity may overcome his wrath. 

Our host most kindly took us to inspect some ground, 
which, after great difficulty with the Turkish authorities, 
has been purchased by his Society. Following the line 
of an old aqueduct, that in places is cut through 
solid rock, we came to the remains of baths and to a 



226 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



plain below upon the borders of the lake. This plain he 
believes to be the true site of Capernaum, quoting in 
support of his theory the fact that here met all the great 
caravan roads to Egypt, to Damascus, and to Akka. 
Another point in his favour is that this wide expanse of 
level land must have been a very suitable site for a city. 
Also here some city stood, as the foundation walls and 
other ruins prove; one, moreover, whereon has been 
fulfilled the prophecy of Jesus that it should be " brought 
down to hell," or Hades, according to the Revised 
Version, which may perhaps have been a figurative way 
of saying that its remains should be buried beneath the 
earth. Certain it is that neither here nor on the rival 
site do any of them remain above its surface. Most 
experts, however, seem to think that Capernaum lay 
a little to the eastward, nearer to the mouth of Jordan. 
The matter is one of purely academic interest, though 
naturally our host would wish to believe that the 
religious association to which he belongs possesses to-day 
the veritable spot of ground where our Lord lived and 
taught nineteen hundred years ago. 

Father Biever showed us also what is said to be the 
site of Chorazin, now marked by a single tree growing 
on a hill above, and the plain where, according to the 
earliest traditions, after His resurrection the Saviour 
bade His disciples "to come and dine." 

Here on this waterlogged swamp I found a tortoise 
basking in the sun after its winter sleep, and secured it, 
desiring to attempt the difficult experiment of bringing 
it home to England, a task which I achieved with many 
adventures. Indeed, not five minutes from this moment 
of writing, I saw that tortoise, which has now become 
quite tame, buried under the shelter of a carnation in 
my garden here in Norfolk. Poor Capernaum, for so 
is he named, does not entirely approve of our English 
climate, and at the first touch of cold or rain goes to 
ground in protest, until the air is dry and the sun shines 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 227 



once more. Then he comes up, devours the young 
lettuces, and makes wild endeavours to start in a bee- 
line back to the Sea of Galilee. Although active under 
suitable climatic conditions, in appearance he is distinctly 
antique. I wonder how many generations have gone by 
since he began to crawl about the edge of the Sea of 
Tiberias. Even in this country individuals of the species 
have been known to live for several centuries, but no 
one has yet discovered what is the life period of a 
healthy tortoise in its native clime. Perhaps this one 
basked in the sun and slept in the shade when Herod 
the Fox built Tiberias in honour of his master, the 
Koman Emperor. It is at least conceivable. 

Having bidden farewell to Father Biever and thanked 
him for his kindness, we reached our boat on the backs 
of Arabs, and went a-fishing by the bank where once 
the Apostles shot their nets. Stripping himself almost 
naked, the fisherman waded into the sea, and cleverly 
cast his net towards the boat. Then, following its 
line, he advanced till the water was up to his armpits, 
drawing in the net as he came. Presently in its meshes 
appeared a great fish, which he extracted and threw 
into the boat. Next he went back to the bank, walked 
along it a few paces, and repeated the performance. 
This time there were two fish, of a different species. To 
me the scene was intensely interesting since, I suppose 
that in much the same fashion, and near this very place, 
Simon Peter and Andrew, his brother, were " casting a 
net into the sea " when their Master, who was walking 
upon the shore, saw them, and called them to be 
f fishers of men." 

After we had made an end of fishing we rowed 
towards Tiberias, past the coasts of Magdala, where 
Mary Magdalene was born. The evening was now 
lovely, and the sea calm as glass. Beautiful, also, 
were the reed-fringed banks among which hid water- 
fowl, and, still more beautiful, a great green and gold 



228 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



halcyon that sat on the bending bough of an oleander, 
and at our approach fled away like a flash of coloured 
light. So by degrees we made our homeward course, 
the boatmen as they rowed singing a quaint and 
melodious love- chant, upon the old theme of an aged 
suitor who by successive gifts of ever-advancing value 
tries to persuade a young beauty to be his. From 
time to time, for the sun was still hot, they paused 
to refresh themselves with copious draughts of the 
lake water, drunk from out of an old meat-tin. This 
water the inhabitants of the district find healthy, but 
in strangers it induces dysentery. 

On our way to the hotel after landing from this 
interesting expedition, one of the most interesting, indeed, 
that I ever made, we saw a curious sight. In front of 
the fort not far from the inn a mob of hideous Bedouin 
women with their children, rough camels that grumbled 
savagely, sheep, goats, and kids, one of which was being 
carried, advanced with a sullen air from the gates of the 
Turkish gaol. It appeared that a traveller — what tra- 
veller we never ascertained — had been robbed by Bedouins 
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Mount Tabor. There- 
upon a party of soldiers surrounded the whole tribe 
concerned, and marched them into Tiberias. The men 
having been lodged in gaol — I wonder when they will 
get out again — the women and their belongings were 
being driven of^ into the wilderness to await the re- 
appearance of their lords and masters. Justice as it is 
administered in Syria seems somewhat wholesale and 
indiscriminate, but of this particular example the Euro- 
pean pilgrim is not likely to complain. 

That evening we dined with Mr. Soutar, an able and 
experienced missionary of the Free Church of Scotland, 
which supports a hospital and mission station in Tiberias. 
The matron of this hospital was our fellow-guest, a refined 
and, if she will pardon its proclamation, a very beautiful 
Scottish lady. The destiny that appointed such a person 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 229 



to tend and care for savage Bedouins and Tiberias Jews 
seems strange indeed. 

Mr. Soutar, whose energy and good works are known 
throughout these coasts, told me many amusing stories 
of the difficulties which confront a missionary in Ottoman 
dominions. Thus : he is a great reader and has a good 
library, but the customs authorities of Palestine are pre- 
judiced on the subject of books. They even seize 
" Baedeker's Guide " when they see it, and may perhaps 
treat the present work in the same fashion. Indeed Mr. 
Soutar finds it almost impossible to import the most 
inoffensive volumes except by the expensive method of 
registered parcel post, when they are sometimes delivered. 
On his arrival in Syria his library only escaped seizure 
because the officials, weary of examining luggage, passed 
the remainder, including his cases of books, on payment 
of a duty charge, which was assessed by weight. A 
brother missionary at Jerusalem, for whom he imported 
the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," was not so fortunate, as 
that work was held to be revolutionary in tone and con- 
fiscated. Ultimately it was rescued by a third missionary, 
a man of business capacities, who paid baksheesh in the 
form of a fixed salary to a certain high officer. When 
next an instalment became due he intimated that before 
it could be touched the " Encyclopaedia " must be handed 
over to his friend. It arrived that very night. 

The Turkish custom-house has a particular aversion 
to maps, considering them doubtful and dangerous inven- 
tions of the Frank. One of the mission societies, not 
long ago, tried to import some charts of Judaea, as it was 
in the time of Solomon. They were impounded. There- 
upon a missionary attended and explained that this 
map showed the country as it had been when the kings 
of Israel ruled. The Turk listened and answered im- 
passively — 

" Your words cannot be true, for in those days they 
drew no maps, and therefore cannot have made these. 



230 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



For the rest, this land is ruled by the Sultan, and to 
speak of any other king who had dominion over it is 
treason. Let the picture writings be destroyed." 

It seems to be the same with everything. Before 
any good work is carried out, a colossal ignorance and 
prejudice must be conquered. This can only be done in 
one way, by the scientific distribution of baksheesh. Thus, 
even to build a hospital necessitates a firman from the 
Sultan, and all dwellers in the East know the cost and 
infinite labour involved in procuring such a document. 
Nor must the officials, being what they are by blood, 
tradition, and upbringing, be too severely blamed, since, 
according to Mr. Soutar, they are all regularly discharged 
every two years, and by this simple method forced to 
repurchase their places at a great price. Sometimes, 
also, a decree is issued that they shall receive no pay for 
four months, and sometimes the post must support itself 
out of incidental and irregular profits ; that is, by bribery 
and blackmail. With a family to feed, under such cir- 
cumstances, most of us would become corrupt, 
i — - Turning to another subject, Mr. Soutar informed me 
that the Jews of Tiberias expect that their Messiah, a 
great and powerful king, will rise bodily out of the Sea of 
Galilee. I asked him also of his work, and he informed 
me that Jewish converts are very rare and much 
oppressed ; indeed their existence is made almost unbear- 
able. He quoted a case in which his own father and 
relatives had utterly disowned a man who became a 
Christian, refusing to know him when they met. Hap- 
pily, however, after some incident which I forget, in this 
instance, a reconciliation was effected. 

The matron also told me of her hospital, which, un- 
fortunately, I was unable to visit, as we were leaving 
Tiberias early on the next morning. One of her chief 
difficulties lay in dealing with the Bedouins, a tribe which 
furnishes many patients. These people, until some des- 
perate sickness brings them to the charitable Christian 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 231 



doors, have very frequently never slept under a roof. From 
year to year they wander according to the immemorial 
custom of then people, resting beneath the stars in 
summer and crowding into their black camel-hair tents in 
winter. The result is that any building stifles them, espe- 
cially at night. This I can quite understand, for as a 
young man I remember similar experiences when, after 
camping on the African veld for weeks, I first returned 
to civilised abodes. One of their patients, the matron 
said, absolutely refused to climb the stairs. When at 
length he was persuaded to the attempt he ascended 
them upon his hands and knees, scrambling along as we 
might do in crossing some terrible and precipitous place. 
These Arabs, however, are very thankful for the skill and 
kindness that is lavished on them : indeed those who are 
cured show their gratitude in many touching and simple 
ways. Nor is this sentiment lacking in the relatives to 
whom they tell their wondrous tale of the compassion of 
the Frank. 

At length, much edified and instructed, we bade fare- 
well to our kind hosts, with whom in their merciful work 
be all good fortune, and returned to the inn. Here we 
found the tortoise, as uncomfortable as any wild Bedouin 
in a hospital ward, engaged in waddling round and round 
the room with an activity surprising in a creature so 
ungainly. My subsequent mosquito-haunted dreams of 
him and of his far-reaching past are, I regret to say, too 
fantastic to be set down in a sober chronicle of facts. 

On the following morning we departed from Tiberias 
for Tabor. The day was dull, and a coverlet of mist hid 
the broad surface of the lake, while above, patches of cloud 
hung upon the mountain foreboding wet. Reaching the 
higher level we rode over a plain, where in places the 
road, that, like everything else, had been prepared for the 
disappointing German Emperor, was actually ploughed 
up by industrious husbandmen, who grudged the few 
feet of ground it covered. Further on, however, the turf 



282 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



became so sound and good that we could actually canter 
over it without fear of falling, a rare circumstance in 
Palestine. 

On our way we met a procession of a hundred or 
more Russian Christians making a pilgrimage round the 
Holy Land. These people, collected from the vast in- 
teriors of the Russian Empire, land at Jaffa, and for the 
rest of that long journey trust to their legs. They walked 
with tall staves mounted in real or imitation silver, were 
clad in rough frieze, and carried kettles and packs, their 
only baggage, strung about their bodies. Nearly all of 
them seemed elderly, grey-bearded men, and women who 
were past the age of child-bearing, although here and 
there I noticed a young woman, perhaps unmarried or a 
widow. I believe that these persons, who if they be fana- 
tical certainly deserve the respect of all right-thinking 
people, belong for the most part to the peasant class, and 
by many years of self-denial save up enough money, some 
£10 or £15 a head, to enable them to make the desired 
pilgrimage. The women are very plain and short in 
stature, but somehow their lack of favour is redeemed 
by the kindliness of their faces. Their husbands and 
brothers also are homely in appearance, but in this re- 
spect seem to improve with age, for both here and in 
other places I saw old men among them who might be 
called handsome. At least their white hair and earnest 
eyes gave them dignity. They appeared to be fond of 
flowers ; at any rate we noticed that, notwithstanding their 
oppressive burdens, many of them carried bunches of 
anemones in their hands. Moreover, they had decorated 
the horses of their mounted guides with wreaths and 
coronals. As we went by they greeted us with courteous 
gestures, and in words which we could not understand. 
I could not help contrasting the conduct of these simple, 
pious folk with that of the troop of tourists whom we had 
met a few days before, and comparing their bows and 
gentle salutations with the hands outstretched in imita- 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 233 

tion of Arab beggars and the jocose cries for baksheesh, 
which to my fancy, perhaps over - nice, amidst these 
hallowed scenes, seemed so strangely out of place. 

I have spoken before of the flowers of Palestine, but 
never in any other spot did I see their equal for loveli- 
ness and frequency. It is scarcely too much to say that 
here for whole miles it would have been difficult to throw 
a shilling at hazard without its falling on some beauteous 
bloom. Everywhere the turf was carpeted with them, in 
a pattern of glorious colours such as no man could design 
or execute. Over this starry plain wandered flocks of 
hundreds of storks. David drew his revolver and fired 
a shot, whereupon they rose like thunder, making the 
air white with their wings, to wheel round and round 
in circles and settle again far away. Where they nest 
I know not, if they do nest here. Perhaps they pass 
northward for this purpose. Perhaps even they are 
the fowls that I have seen building upon the roof-tops 
in Holland. Who can tell ? I wonder, by the way, 
why these birds confine themselves to the other side 
of the Channel. There is little difference in climate 
between the Netherlands and the flats of eastern Eng- 
land, and to them a few more miles of sea would be 
no matter. Yet Nature says to them — Thus far shalt 
thou go and no further. 

We halted to lunch in a most imposing ruin of vast 
extent, called Kahn-el-Tujar. This building is said to 
have been constructed in 1487, and was a caravan- 
serai for the accommodation of merchants journeying 
to Damascus and elsewhere. All about are the remains 
of the chambers where they slept, with eating-halls and 
open courts, perhaps for the picketing of their camels 
and other beasts of burden. A quarter of a mile away 
on an opposing hill is another ruin, that of a Saracen 
castle, whose garrison, I suppose, protected — or plun- 
dered — the caravanserai. I do not know when these 
places were deserted or destroyed, but until recently a 



234 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



fair was held here. Indeed it was the site of a cattle 
sale only two years ago. 

Our meal finished we saddled up, and started some- 
what hurriedly, hoping to reach the top of Tabor before 
the threatening rain came down in earnest. The moun- 
tain rose immediately above us, a round majestic mass, 
of old the landmark on the frontiers of Issachar and 
Zebulun. Here it was, too, that Deborah the prophetess 
commanded Barak to gather his host for the smiting of 
Sisera, saying, " Hath not the Lord God of Israel com- 
manded, saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and 
take with thee ten thousand men of the children of 
Naphtali, and of the children of Zebulun." Here also, 
according to the earliest and best Christian tradition, 
confirmed by Origen little more than two centuries after 
the birth of Christ, and St. Jerome, who wrote in the 
fourth century, but questioned by Baedeker and by the 
Rev. John Lightfoot, the Hebrew scholar, who died in 
1675, took place the Transfiguration of the Saviour in 
the presence of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John. On 
this point, however, I shall have more to say. 

The slopes of the holy mountain are thickly clothed 
with oaks, other trees, and various kinds of scrub. 
Strangely enough, Tabor has always been considered 
holy; by the early Jews, the Christians of all ages, the 
Saracens, and the people of Palestine of to-day. This 
reputation, moreover, is quite independent of the cir- 
cumstance of the Transfiguration, except of course in 
the case of Christians. As we rode upwards we passed 
the tents of an encampment of Bedouins, who have 
the reputation of being among the most lawless of 
their turbulent race, but they did nothing more than 
stare at us. Scrambling along the steep zig-zag path, 
a ride of about an hour brought us to the summit of 
the mountain, which is said to be three kilometres in 
circumference. Passing beneath the ancient gateway 
we rode to the Latin monastery, known as Residence 




Roman Catholic Convent with Ruins on Mount Tabor 



THE SEA OF GALILEE 235 



de la Transfiguration, now in charge of the learned 
Pere Barnabe, O.F.M., Missionaire Apostolique, and an 
assistant brother. The Father had not returned from 
some expedition when we arrived, but, upon presenting 
our introduction, his subordinate entertained us kindly. 

We inquired at once for the fresh horses that our 
American friend had so generously promised to send 
to meet us here. Our chagrin may be imagined when 
we learned that these horses arrived on the previous 
day, but, as we were not there, had returned to Nazareth, 
or, for aught we knew, to Jerusalem. Indeed this was 
nothing short of a blow to us, since to attempt the 
journey across the plain of Esdraelon and the mountains 
beyond upon our weary crocks would be a bold under- 
taking. What made the disappointment more tiresome 
also, was the certainty that it had not been brought 
about by chance since, to our knowledge, the dragoman 
in charge of the horses had received strict and full orders 
from his employer as to when and where he was to meet 
us. Unfortunately, however, the American gentleman, 
in his forethought and generosity, had impressed upon 
us that we were to pay nothing for these horses, an 
injunction which, of course, we intended to disregard. 
Without doubt he had told the dragoman, or owner, the 
same thing, whereon that astute Eastern, not knowing 
our intentions, fulfilled the letter of the law, but broke 
its spirit. That is to say, he came to meet us, but 
on the wrong day, and forthwith vanished, so far as 
we are concerned, for ever. 



CHAPTEK XVII 

TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 

Lacking other consolations in our sad circumstance, we 
took such comfort as we could from tea and the old 
saying about tears and spilt milk, after which we set out 
to see the ruins. Both that afternoon and for three 
hours on the following morning in the company of 
Father Barnabe\ I examined these various and fascinat- 
ing relics very closely. I do not, however, propose to 
attempt any detailed description of them ; first because 
it would occupy too much space, and secondly, for the 
reason that this has already been done in a fashion which 
I could not hope to rival, by Father Barnabe himself, in 
his work Le Mont Thdbor (J. Mersch, Paris). 

These ruins, that are surrounded first by the re- 
mains of the encircling and ancient wall built by Flavius 
Josephus, the Jewish historian of the Roman wars, 
which protected the whole top of the mountain, 
and, secondly, with the broken fortifications reared 
by the Saracens and destroyed by them also between 
1211 and 1217, may for the present purpose be roughly 
divided into two parts, that lying to the west of the 
modern Latin monastery, and that which extends to the 
east. To the west, at the foot of the garden and beyond 
it, are caves which at some period probably served as 
tombs, but were afterwards, doubtless during the first 
few centuries of the Christian era, used as the habita- 
tions of hermits. In certain of these can still be seen 
benches hollowed in the rock, where year by year some 
long departed saint rested his weary bones, and other 



TABOK, CARMEL, AND ACRE 237 



little hollows outside, which the rain filled to serve him 
with drinking water. 

It is strange to look at these wretched places and 
reflect upon the passionate prayers, the nightly vigils, the 
pious but in my view mistaken purposes that hallow 
them. What a life it must have been which the old 
devotees endured for decades in those damp holes. There 
is something pitiable in that tale of useless sacrifice. Yet 
in their way, how good they were, these men who deserted 
the real, if fleeting and uncertain, pleasures that the 
world has to offer to its sons, in order to wear out their 
lives thus, like lichens withering upon an inhospitable 
wall, till at length some brother anchorite found them 
stiff in their self-appointed tombs. When they were 
dead others took their places, and so at intervals of ten, 
or twenty, or fifty years, others and yet others till the 
custom perished, and its scant memorials writ in stone 
were covered with the dust of generations, in due season 
to be reopened and read by us to-day. God rest them 
all, poor men, whom the bitterness of life, the fear of 
death, and a hope of some ultimate transcendent remedy 
drove to such spiritual, and physical, expedients. 

Beyond, or rather between, these hermit cells lies an 
ancient cemetery whereof Father Barnabe' has excavated 
many of the graves. These are very curious, and, as he 
believes, contain the remains of some of the 50,000 
people who took refuge here from the Romans in the 
time of J osephus. They are dug out to about the depth 
of six feet, and lined with rough stones, among which 
have been found a few fragments of skeletons and some 
coins of the Roman period. Another very curious relic 
is a sloping cement slab in what evidently has been a 
chamber with conveniences for the heating of water, 
which the Pere Barnabe" surmises — and after examination 
I agree with him — was used for the ceremonial washing 
of corpses before they were consigned to earth. What 
sights and sorrows must this place have seen. 



238 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Then there are what appear to have been wine- 
presses, with hollows at a lower level for the collection 
of the must, and great cemented cisterns where rain- 
water was, and is still, gathered, dating, it is thought, 
from the time of the Saracens. Beyond all these lie the 
wrecks of a Levitical settlement. 

So much for the western side. 

Passing through a kind of gateway to the east the 
visitor finds himself among whole acres of tumbled ruins. 
Here was the fortress built by the Benedictines during 
the twelfth century — I think that Saladin massacred 
them all. Here, too, were the monasteries of various 
orders, with their refectories, kitchens, sleeping-rooms, 
and baths built on the Turkish plan. One can even see 
where they warmed the water; indeed it is on record 
that the frequent use of this luxurious form of bath by 
these monks caused something of a scandal. Especially 
noticeable are the remains of a .great and lofty hall, 
believed to have been the chapter-room of the Benedic- 
I tines, and a chapel that I suppose belonged to this order, 
\ found to be floored with beautiful mosaic. This, how- 
! ever, has been covered up again to prevent the Russian 
i pilgrims, who are very troublesome in such respects, 
from carrying it away piecemeal. 

Many are the far mementoes of the past which I 
omit, as I despair of describing them in a clear and satis- 
factory fashion. Let us go on to the great basilica, first 
built by order of the Empress Helena, with its sister but 
inferior chapels on either side, supposed to have been 
dedicated to Moses and Elias. It is a long building 
with a round apse, which has been disinterred in recent 
years. At the eastern extremity of this apse stands an 
altar built up again of the rough original stones and sur- 
mounted by a plain, iron cross. This altar, placed upon 
the extreme verge of the mountain, is by immemorial 
report believed to mark the spot where our Saviour stood 
during the occurrence of the ineffable event of the Trans- 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 239 



figuration. Who can look at it unmoved? Anciently 
it was roofed in, now in its simple loneliness it stands 
open to the heavens, and thus, to my mind, gains in 
dignity and suggestiveness. The tendency in the Holy 
Land is to cover every sacred site with some tawdry 
dome. I prefer the infinite arc of the skies, and for 
decoration the wild flowers and creeping ferns and 
grasses which grow amid the mouldering stones. Once 
the southern walls of this basilica were heaped with 
Saracenic towers and fortifications. Now it and these 
have come to an equal ruin. 

At the fall of night, through the midst of torrential 
rain driven in sheets by a violent gale of wind, I went 
out and stood alone upon the broken wall of one of 
these ancient towers, till darkness overtook me, and the 
gusts became so fierce that on that narrow, perilous 
place, I grew afraid to match my strength against their 
fury. Beneath me stretched the vast plain of Esdraelon 
looking extraordinarily grand and gloomy in the dull 
lights of that rushing storm. There to the right was the 
territory of Zebulun ; to the left the land of Issachar ; 
behind the country of Naphtali ; yonder soared the 
point of little Hermon, and beyond all rose the crest 
of Mount Gilboa. Suddenly revealed in swift glimpses 
to be as suddenly lost to sight, it was indeed a majestic 
prospect, but nothing there moved me so much as 
that desolate altar and the iron cross which stood 
in the dim apse beneath. It would be hard for any 
man to set down the thoughts that strike him in 
such a scene and hour. I will not attempt the task 
further than to* say that this one lonely experience 
repaid me for all the toil and difficulties of my visit 
to Syria. 

Two falcons were nesting, or preparing to nest, among 
the stones of the tower. My advent disturbed them. 
With wild screams they swept around me, and the pre- 
sence of these creatures seemed as it were to complete, 



240 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



even to accentuate, the solemn conditions of the place, 
as the great eagles that always hover about the crest 
of Tabor complete and accentuate its storied and eternal 
solitude. If ever there was a spot where God in His 
power might manifest Himself upon an earth He 
loved, and was pleased to redeem, surely this one 
is fitting. So at least I thought, who was happy 
in the occasion and circumstances of my visit. Seen 
in the glare of day, and crowded with hundreds of 
Russian pilgrims, perhaps it would have impressed me 
differently. 

That evening also we went to the Greek church and 
monastery, lying on the north of the plateau. Some of 
the buildings here are very ancient, and include gigantic 
mediaeval cisterns. Baedeker states that the Greeks claim 
to possess the actual spot of the Transfiguration, but in 
this I think he must be mistaken. At any rate, when 
I questioned the monks, they denied any such preten- 
sions. The spot of the Transfiguration, they told me, 
was where it is shown in the ground of the Latins ; 
they only own the ancient churches built, as they said, 
in honour of Moses and Elias. 

On returning to the hospice we found that the Pere 
Barnabe' had arrived and were introduced to him. He 
is a missionary priest of the best and most elevated 
stamp, one of those men, to be found among the votaries 
of every creed, from whom goodness and charity seem 
to flow. Before he was sent to Tabor he followed 
his sacred profession for many years in China and else- 
where, and being gifted with an intellect capable of 
drawing profit from the many experiences of a varied 
life, as I soon discovered, he has made the most of 
his opportunities for observation. 

We came to Mount Tabor prepared to rough it, 
whereas the dinner served to us in the hospice was, I 
think, about the best we ate in Palestine. It only lacked 
one thing, the society of our host, but I imagine it to be 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 241 



against the rules of the order that he should eat with his 
guests, especially in Lent. After our meal the Pere 
Barnabe joined us, however, and we spent the next three 
hours discussing in French and English Tabor and all 
that has to do therewith. The mountain, by the way, is 
still ravaged by hyenas, of which an enormous stuffed 
specimen is set upon the walls of the refectory. Indeed 
one of the fierce watch-dogs that are kept in the yard 
is partly paralysed by a bite in the back from the iron 
jaws of this ravening beast. 

Most of our conversation, however, turned upon the 
identity of the mountain with the place of the Trans- 
figuration of our Lord, to prove which the Pere Barnabe 
has written his book, Le Mont Thabor. Against this 
identity various arguments have been urged, but the 
principal of them — indeed, to my mind, the only one 
which seems to have much weight — -is that advanced by 
Baedeker, that the Transfiguration could scarcely have 
taken place on Tabor, " as the top was covered with 
houses in the time of Christ." To this Father Barnabe 
answers, and proves what he says, that at the epoch of 
our Lord there was no town on the crest of Tabor. This, 
indeed, seems to be self-evident, seeing that to the pre- 
sent day the only water-supply is obtained from cisterns, 
which do not appear to be of very ancient construction. 

Moreover, there is evidence on the point, that of 
Josephus {Wars of the Jews, Book IV. chap. i.). 
Speaking of Mount Tabor he says : " Now, Josephus 
erected this so long a wall in forty days' time, and 
furnished it with other materials and with water from 
below for the inhabitants only used rain water ; as, there- 
fore, there was a great number of people gotten together 
on this mountain, Vespasian sent Placidus with 600 
horsemen thither." Afterwards he tells how " their water 
failed them, and so they delivered up the mountain and 
themselves to Placidus." Note, " the mountain," not 
the city. 

Q 



242 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Here is what Father Barnabe says upon the point 
of Baedeker's remarks : — 

" L'auteur de cet article n'indique pas la source ou il a puise 
ce detail et nous le defions de la /aire. 

" En temps de guerre, le Thabor etait sou vent un lieu de 
refuge pour les habitants de la plaine et un camp naturel pour 
les gens armes. Mais, comme nous l'avons vu dans les premiers 
chapitres de cet ouvrage, il n'y eut jamais de ville sur le sommet 
du Thabor et personne ne pourra prouver qu'il y ait eu des 
habitants au temps de Notre Seigneur. Olympiodore dit ex- 
pressement que ' le Thabor etait desert avant le venue du Christ.' 

" Mais admettons pour un instant qu'il y eut des maisons sur 
le Thabor au temps du Christ. Comment prouverait-on que sur 
cet immense dome couvert d'arbres, Jesus n'aurait pas pu trouver 
un endroit pour prier et se transfigurer devant trois de ses 
disciples sans etre vu? Nous ajoutons que, meme dans cette 
hypothese, la Transfiguration pouvait avoir lieu a l'extremite 
orientale du plateau, ou fut eleve la premiere eglise et oil une 
tradition secondaire localise la scene de ce glorieux evenement. 
Du centre du plateau au mur d'enceinte de Flavius Josephe, 
vers l'occident, on voit beaucoup de ruines d'anciennes maisons, 
de construction assez miserable. 

" Au centre du plateau on a decouvert, il y a deux ans, un 
antique petit cimetiere dont les tombes ont ete violees au temps 
des croisades. A l'orient de ce cimetiere on a trouve plusieurs 
grottes sepulcrales. Dans l'hypothese que ce cimetiere et ces 
maisons aient ete anterieurs a Flavius J osephe, il est certain que 
les habitations ne depassaient pas le cimetiere du cote de l'orient, 
parce-qu'il etait absolument defendu aux Juif s d'avoir des tombes 
au milieu de leurs habitations. 

" La partie orientale du plateau ne pouvait pas etre couverte 
de maisons, si maisons il y avait au temps de Notre Seigneur. 
Or, depuis le cimetiere jusqu'a l'eglise construite anciennement 
sur l'endroit traditionnel de la Transfiguration, la distance est 
beaucoup plus grande que celle de Gethsemani a la ville de 
Jerusalem. Personne n'ignore que Jesus s'est refugie dans ce 
jardin pour prier, pendant qu'on le cherchait pour le crucifier. 

" Quelque hypothese qu'on imagine, on ne prouvera jamais que 
le Sauveur n'ait pas pu se transfigurer sur le Thabor." 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 243 



Let us turn for a moment to the evidence in favour 
of Tabor. First, there is the apocryphal gospel of the 
twelve apostles, which is also known as " The Gospel 
according to the Hebrews." Into the merits or demerits 
of that strange work, which seems to have been written 
towards the end of the first century of our era, this is not 
the place to enter. The only point with which we need 
concern ourselves is that the writer, or writers, who prob- 
ably began to live within fifty years of the date of the 
Crucifixion, connected Tabor with the Saviour. In 
chapter xvii. v. 1, Jesus is made to say, "Now, my 
mother, the Holy Spirit, seized me by a lock of my 
hair, and carried me on to the mountain of Great 
Tabor." 

Origen states positively that " Tabor is the mountain 
in Galilee on which Christ was transfigured." St. Cyril 
of Jerusalem, who lived in the fourth century, says, 
" They were witnesses of the transfiguration of Jesus on 
the Mount Tabor." St. Jerome says of St. Paula, " She 
scaled the Mount Tabor whereon the Lord was trans- 
figured." 

I might quote other authorities, but perhaps I have 
said enough on the matter. I will only add, therefore, 
that after visiting the place, hearing Father Barnabe's 
learned discourses, and reading his able and excellent 
book, for my part I am convinced that he is right, and 
not Baedeker ; that here and nowhere else happened the 
divine occurrence which is recorded in the Gospels. 

When we rose the next morning it was to find to 
our dismay that it had been pouring with rain all night, 
and that more wet threatened. Under ordinary circum- 
stances this would have mattered little, but with the 
plain of Esdraelon to cross the affair was different. On 
these flats in dry weather riding is easy enough, but 
after prolonged rain whole stretches of them are turned 
into sloughs of despond, through the worst of which a 
horse can scarcely pass. The lot of the traveller who 



244 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



finds himself foundered in these mud-holes and be- 
nighted on that inhospitable plain, or forced to take 
refuge in some filthy, vermin-haunted native habitation, 
is not by any means agreeable. With fresh, strong 
horses much may be ventured, but the condition of our 
poor animals has already been described, and we had 
been disappointed of our remounts. The question was — 
dared we attempt to force them through several days' 
journey over swamps and mountains ? When asked 
Father Barnabe shook his head, while David was down- 
right despondent. 

" Of course," he said sadly, " for me it does not 
matter ; I can take off my clothes and wade in the 
mud, but what I am wondering is how you gentlemen 
will like that ? " 

As his opinion was evidently very strong against 
our making the attempt upon such wretched horses, 
in the end, to our great disappointment, we were obliged 
to abandon the idea of attempting to reach Jerusalem 
by Nablus. This decision involved returning to Haifa 
and journeying thence to Jaffa by sea, and so on to 
Jerusalem. Such are the vexing accidents of Eastern 
travel, but as our plans would not allow of our waiting 
several days upon the chance of the weather clearing, 
and as, if we did, it seemed more than doubtful whether 
we could obtain fresh horses, there was no choice but 
to bow the head to fate. Also, there were compensa- 
tions. Thus, the ruins of Samaria, Jacob's Well, and 
the old roll of the Samaritan law excepted, there is 
not very much to be seen upon this Nablus route, 
whereas, by returning we should have the opportunity 
of visiting Acre and Mount Carmel and making a 
second halt at Nazareth. Incidentally also, as it was 
now no longer necessary that we should leave the 
Mount that morning, we had the advantage of a more 
prolonged exploration of Tabor with Father Barnabe" 
as cicerone. 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 245 



By the way, to be the priest in charge of one of 
these hospices during the spring, when visitors arrive, 
must be a somewhat arduous task. The escorting of 
troops of Russian pilgrims — watching the while that 
they do not carry the place off stone by stone as 
relics — is in itself a labour for which, after a time, 
the contemplation of their piety can scarcely compensate. 
Worse still, to my mind, must be the daily round of 
conducting a certain class of tourists, many of them 
careless, indifferent, or ignorant, and some not even 
careful to avoid paining their guide by scoffing audibly 
at events, scenes, and traditions, which to him are of 
the holiest. 

Just as we returned to the monastery, after three 
hours of industrious examination, Mr. Brocklebank, an 
English clergyman, arrived. Seeing that the Father 
was thoroughly tired, and that he had other things in 
hand, I ventured to offer to take his place and escort 
the new-comer to the best of my ability. For this I 
feel that I owe my apologies to Mr. Brocklebank, since 
I must have been but a poor substitute for Father 
Barnabe. However, I did my best, though I fear that 
I led my victim a desperate dance whilst searching in 
a chaos of walls, caves, and graves for the place where 
the ancient Jews washed the bodies of the dead, which 
I was determined that he should see. At last, I am 
proud to say, I found it. 

After lunch our wretched steeds were brought round, 
and, having collected the tortoise, Capernaum, and re- 
stored him to his basket, I bade farewell to Father 
Barnabe* with very real regret and started down the 
mountain, though not by the road we had wished to 
travel. Capernaum, by the way, had, I fear, passed 
an unhappy night. He is a creature which dislikes cold, 
and, so soon as I let him loose to take the air, he made 
furious attempts to bury himself in the rocky soil of 
Tabor. When he paused exhausted from these ineffec- 



246 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



tive labours one of the monastery dogs seems to have 
discovered him. The interview that followed must have 
been of a nature very similar to that which, as history 
relates, occurred beneath the sofa between the monkey 
and the parrot. It was a dishevelled and dilapidated 
Capernaum that went into the basket among the baggage. 
Thanks, however, to his thick shell, his health did not 
suffer materially. 

On our ride over swelling hills to Nazareth we found 
yet other flowers, gorgeous red tulips and a most splendid 
variety of iris, though of this, either here or elsewhere, 
I saw no further specimen. In the evening we went for 
a long walk about the Nazareth mountains, digging up 
cyclamen roots, studying the character of the agriculture, 
and trying to identify sites. That walk in the pleasant 
rain-washed air, and amongst those surroundings, is 
one of my most agreeable recollections of our journey. 
Finally we revisited " Mary's Spring," and so back 
down the steep streets of the town. On our way a 
little incident occurred which revealed the difference 
between the manners of East and West. One of the 
pretty Nazareth children, a girl of about thirteen, 
followed me for a long way with her persistent and 
worrying cry of " Baksheesh! Hadji," that is, Pilgrim. 
At length I turned and put into her outstretched 
hand a particularly beautiful anemone which I was 
carrying. How the joke would have been received 
by an English beggar may be imagined, but this girl 
took the flower, curtseyed, and went away smiling. 

Next morning early we started back to Haifa. On 
our way we met a shepherd clothed in a robe of many 
colours, doubtless such as Jacob gave to Joseph, and 
bearing upon his shoulders a lost sheep. This illustra- 
tion of the saying recorded in St. Luke was really 
remarkable. " What man of you, having an hundred 
sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety 
and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which 



Shetherd Carrying a Lost Sheep 




The River Jordan 



(See/>. 295) 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 247 



is lost until he find it ? And when he hath found it, 
he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing." 

It shows once more how closely the Saviour 
clung to the use. of natural examples around Him as 
a groundwork of His parables, and how little those 
examples have changed in the course of nineteen 
centuries. 

On reaching the outskirts of Haifa we struck to 
the left, passing some of the neat houses of the German 
settlement. In a field attached to one of these I saw, 
to my delight, a colonist using a good European plough, 
and congratulated him upon his enterprise. Thence we 
rode to the flank of Carmel, which we began to climb. 
About half-an-hour's ride brought us to the monastery 
at the top. Here monks have lived since the twelfth 
century, when the hermits became the Carmelites, but 
twice they have been burnt out and massacred, and 
once their church was made a mosque. Once also it 
was a hospital when, in 1799, the great Napoleon laid 
siege to Acre. Ultimately he retreated, whereupon the 
Turks came and butchered his wounded men in this 
monastery on Mount Carmel. They are buried outside 
its gate. 

The view of sea and land from this place is very 
fine. Within the church we were shown the cave 
where Elijah hid himself. It may be so, but there are 
many like it all about the mountain. Leaving the 
monastery we began to descend the further side of 
Carmel by a trail so steep that we were obliged to 
scramble along it, driving our horses before us. Indeed 
the way in which these active creatures managed to 
keep their footing upon slanting and slippery slabs of 
rock, was nothing short of marvellous. However, they 
came down without accident. All the slopes of Carmel 
are covered with the most beautiful flowers and sweet 
herbs nurtured by the dew for which it is famous. 
Here, amongst other plants and shrubs, the odorous 



MS A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



thyme grows in masses, also white wild roses and 
various ground orchids. 

Not far from the bottom of the mountain and facing 
the sea we reached the cave where, when " Jezebel cut 
off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred 
of them and hid them by fifty." I confess that what 
has always puzzled me about this passage, and not less 
now that I have seen the place of his righteous act, is — 
what became of the other fifty? I suppose, that as 
space was limited, they had to hide outside, and take 
their chance of being cut off by Jezebel. 

This cave, which is acknowledged by the native Jews 
who occasionally hold some religious service here, has all 
the appearance of being genuine. With packing it would 
accommodate fifty prophets, and there is a supply of 
water in a cistern cut out of the solid rock. 

The next day was Sunday, and we went to the English 
church, although, I am sorry to say, I forget by what 
mission or society it is maintained. It is an exceedingly 
neat building, and furnished in the most excellent taste. 
The service was attended by a good number of native 
Christians, some of whom wore the fez. This custom 
I cannot quite understand. I noticed that our drago- 
man, David, who is a Christian, frequently kept on his 
fez in places of worship, although sometimes he took it 
off; for instance, in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. 
I asked him to explain the matter, but could get no 
satisfactory answer. He said it was a question of custom, 
and shrugged his shoulders. Orientals, as we know, show 
respect by covering the head and baring the feet, so, 
I presume, that even when they adopt another faith 
they are still apt to obey an immemorial tradition. The 
subject is one worthy of investigation by the learned. 
Why, for instance, should the Apostle Paul speak so 
strongly on this point? In the eleventh chapter of 
Corinthians he says, " Every man praying or prophesy- 
ing, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 249 

But every woman who prayeth or prophesieth with 
her head uncovered dishonoureth her head ; for that is 
even all one as if she were shaven. . . . For a man, 
indeed, ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he 
is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the 
glory of the man." 

I admit that I do not understand these sayings, or 
what rooted conviction caused the great Apostle to 
deliver himself with such force upon the subject. It 
is difficult to comprehend why a woman dishonours her 
head by appearing in a place of worship without a 
covering, which, after all, is only designed as a pro- 
tection against the weather. Or was the true origin 
of the habit in the East, in the case of woman, meant 
to be a protection against the unauthorised and in- 
appropriate admiration of men ? In other words, was 
the headpiece alluded to a veil or yashmak ? 

The whole matter is mysterious. For instance, why 
have Turks so deep a veneration for the turban ? The 
traveller will often have noticed at the head of Ottoman 
graves a conical-shaped pillar, which, I am informed, is 
intended to symbolise the turban. I do not know if this 
is really the case, but I have seen in Cyprus tombs in 
ancient buildings that must themselves be centuries old, 
covering the remains of Moslem saints whose very names 
are forgotten, whereof the head pillar is still adorned 
with the actual turban of the departed. What seems 
the more curious is that as the cloth of this article 
of dress rots, fresh wrappings are, from generation to 
generation, wound about the decaying core by the hands 
of the faithful. Why is this done ? 

That Sunday afternoon we made an expedition to 
Acre, to reach which town we crossed the Kishon by 
a bridge not easy to negotiate, and proceeded for about 
two hours on a sandy road that runs along the sea- 
coast. Near Acre another river must be forded, the 
ancient Belus, now called Nahr Namen. There is a 



250 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



bridge over this river also, but at present, like most 
things in Palestine, it is broken down, and only a few 
days before our visit some horses had been killed in 
attempting its passage. The result was that in order 
to cross we were obliged to wade out into the sea where 
the river joins it, through water which reached to our 
horses' bellies. Marching along the sands we met a 
band of Turkish conscripts, ragged and melancholy- 
looking peasants, who had been pressed into military 
service. These poor men, who must serve for five years, 
receive little or no pay ; lucky are they if they get food 
and clothing. Christians are not impressed, not from 
any consideration for their faith or prejudices, but be- 
cause the Turks, perhaps wisely, do not trust them. As 
the price of exemption they pay an annual tax of about 
10s., which, looked at from their point of view, strikes 
me as an excellent bargain. Among these conscripts 
I noted one or two men who were quite old. David's 
explanation, I cannot say if it is correct, was that they had 
escaped conscription in past years, but, having at length 
fallen into the hands of the recruiting agents, were 
marched off to do duty as cooks or camp servants. 

Acre, that we entered through a great gate, beyond 
which stands a fine but dilapidated house, now, we were 
told, occupied by soldiers, but once, as I judge, a palace, 
is a mass of broken fortifications, many of them dating 
from the crusading period. Everywhere in Acre are 
enormous meaningless walls, passages, and bastions. In 
the sea itself stands an old castle of the Crusaders; on 
the sea front a stretch of wall battered to ruins by shot 
and never rebuilt. Where once was a great Christian 
church now appears the yard of a caravanserai, filled, on 
the day of our visit, with camels and groups of Persian 
merchants. Round this court, formerly a place of 
worship, still run noble cloisters, carried upon pillars 
of Egyptian granite, taken, doubtless, by the Templars, or 
other knights, from the ruins of some pagan building, 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 251 



for all the capitals are of the mediaeval period and 
fashioned in a different stone. Above these cloisters, 
built over the supporting arches, stand rooms occupied 
by the merchants and other travellers. 

Acre, which has a population of about 10,000 souls, 
is the most entirely Turkish town that I have visited. 
The inhabitants are said to be very fanatical, even 
more so than at Nablus. Indeed during Ramazan, the 
annual Mahommedan feast, I was told that it is not safe 
for Europeans to be seen walking about the streets, 
especially if they offend the prejudices of the pious 
sons of the Prophet by smoking. There seems to be 
a large garrison of Turkish soldiers in the place, and 
wretched-looking enough they were in their ragged and 
patched apology for uniform. Some of these mounted 
guard at the gaol. We looked through the bars of 
the iron gates, and saw the prisoners within, miserable 
wretches crowded together in a courtyard. I believe 
that for food they are obliged in most cases to rely 
upon what is given them by the charitable or their 
relations. [If none is brought to them they starve, 
while from every dish the gaoler takes his toll. When 
they saw us they thrust skinny arms through the bars 
of the gate, offering for sale whips which they manu- 
facture, the same, indeed, that are used on their own 
backs, only more ornamented. It would be interesting 
to know what is the death rate per thousand in these 
dens, and what happens when an epidemic strikes them. 
The same that befell at Newgate a century ago, perhaps. 
I left this inferno with pleasure. 

Acre, then called Accho, was originally a Phoenician 
city. Subsequently one of the Ptolemies who captured 
it named the place Ptolemais, by which title it was 
known to St. Paul. The Arabs when they seized the 
town in 638 restored to it its name of Acre. In 1104 
it fell into the hands of Baldwin, after which the various 
crusading forces used it as their principal port, and at 



252 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



times as their capital. Saladin took it after the battle 
of Hattin, of which I have written. 

Guy de Lusignan besieged it in 1189, and in 1191 
Cceur-de-Lion joined him and stormed the city. Exactly 
a hundred years later it was recaptured by the Sultan 
Melik-el-Ashraf. Such is the history of Acre, or so 
much of it as need concern us, put in the fewest pos- 
sible words. 

What sights those ancient stones have seen ! One 
may sympathise with the objects of the Crusaders. I 
do myself, and even, I confess, should suffer no sorrow 
if any of the Christian powers were moved to take the 
Moslem by his turban and propel him out of the small 
district so sacred to all that section of maukind who 
believe that here lived and died the Saviour and the 
Hope of every individual among them. Only I should 
prefer that it was a Protestant power, since otherwise 
the quarrels would be many and the oppression great. If 
either the Latins or the Greeks were in a position of 
complete authority, things would go very hardly with 
other sections of the Christian family. Perhaps, indeed, 
they would fare better at the hands of the Jews. 

To return to the Crusader. His method was not 
equal to his motives, or mayhap a disposition not origi- 
nally strained of the quality of mercy was soured by 
such scenes as occurred at the battle of Hattin. Long 
before that event, however, at Jerusalem in July 1099, 
the first Crusaders, under the leadership of Godfrey de 
Bouillon and Tancred, celebrated the storming of the 
city by the slaughter of over 70,000 Moslems, regardless 
of sex or age. The Jews, by way of variation, they 
burnt alive in their synagogue, and the children they 
threw over the wall into the Valley of Jehoshaphat. 
After these merciless doings Godfrey, " clad in a robe 
of pure white," knelt at the reputed grave of Christ 
in the church of the Sepulchre, and on behalf of his 
victorious host returned thanks to the Prince of Peace, 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 253 



who had vouchsafed that Jerusalem should thus be 
cleansed of Infidel and Jew ! 

Richard of England, therefore, was but copying the 
most approved models of knightly grace when, after the 
fall of Acre, he revenged himself for some breach of 
faith, real or supposed, on the part of Saladin, by execut- 
ing 2500 Turkish captives outside the town, while his 
royal brother of Burgundy put a period to the earthly 
troubles of an equal number within the walls. Says 
Geoffrey de Vinsauf in his " Itinerary of Richard I." : — 

" He (that is Richard) called together a council of the chiefs 
of the people, by whom it was resolved that the hostages should 
all be hanged — [This is a mistake ; their heads were cut off] — 
except a few nobles of a higher class, who might ransom them- 
selves or be exchanged for some Christian captives. King 
Richard, aspiring to destroy the Turks root and branch and to 
punish their wanton arrogance, as well as to abolish the law of 
Mahomet and to vindicate the Christian religion, on the Friday 
after the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ordered 2700 
of the hostages to be led forth from the city and hanged. His 
soldiers marched forward with delight to fulfil his commands, 
and to retaliate, with the assent of the Divine Grace, by taking 
revenge upon those who had destroyed so many of the Christians 
with missiles from bows and arbalests." 

J ames, in his " Life of Richard Cceur-de-Lion," adds 
that the horrid scene closed with an extended search for 
valuables inside the bodies of the murdered Saracens, 
and the careful preservation of parts of them for " medi- 
cinal uses." 

When, as a lad, I inspected the original Bayeux 
tapestry at Bayeux, and came to understand the ideas of 
ornament and pictorial jest which suggested themselves to 
the minds of the very noblest ladies of that time, those for 
whose pure sakes knights endured so many discomforts 
and broke so many heads, my conception of the chivalry 
of the period, as portrayed in our popular romances, was 
rudely shaken. A careful study of the inner history of 



254 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the Crusades does not tend to build it up again. Yet 
heroic things did happen in those days. Here is an- 
other story of Acre. 

Full a hundred years have gone by : Richard and 
his army are dust like those poor captives whom he 
butchered, but perhaps some of their grandsons, or great- 
grandsons, once more fight on the walls of Acre for the 
last time, since the triumph of the Crescent is at hand. 
Leaders were traitorous, the Moslems swarmed in thou- 
sands, and inch by inch, through streets that were a 
shambles, the town was taken. There was a nunnery in 
it, where dwelt the Virgins of St. Clare. St. Antonine 
and the chronicler Wadin, in his Annates Minorum, tell 
the story of their end. I am sorry that I cannot quote 
Wadin's account in full, as some modern tastes might 
find it outspoken. Here, however, is a summary. 

When the Abbess, who must have been a brave 
woman, knew that the enemy had entered the city, she 
caused the bell of the convent to be rung. The sisters 
having assembled, she told them what they must expect 
in very straightforward language. 

" My dear daughters, my excellent sisters," said she, 
" we must, in this certain danger of life and modesty, 
show ourselves above our sex. ... In this crisis we can- 
not hope to escape their fury by flight, but we can by a 
resolution, painful, it is true, but sure." She then went 
on to point out that the sight of mutilated faces is 
revolting to humanity and to suggest such mutilatio*. 
Probably it was not fear but conscience which prevented 
her from advising a more thorough though, under the cir- 
cumstances, easier and perfectly legitimate alternative — 
that of suicide. The Abbess ended, " I will set you the 
example. Let those who desire to meet their heavenly 
Spouse imitate their mistress." At these words she cut 
off her nose with a razor. " The others did the same and 
boldly disfigured themselves to present themselves the 
more beautiful before Jesus Christ." 



TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE 255 



The end of the story is simple : " For the Saracens 
on beholding their bleeding faces . . . killed them all 
without sparing one." Thus these forgotten heroic 
women achieved their martyrdom. What a spectacle 
must they have presented as thus disfigured, their white 
robes stained with their own blood, they sat, each in her 
accustomed place within the chapel, telling their beads 
and mumbling prayers with mutilated lips, while the 
devilish Saracens burst in upon them. 

And it happened. This is no fiction of the romancer. 
A few brief generations since thus did those noble 
women suffer, die, and pass to their own place. 

The true blood and the false showed themselves on 
that day of fear. Says the French historian, Michaud : 
" John de Gresly and Oste de Granson . . . fled away 
at the very commencement of the battle. Many others 
who had taken the oath to die, at the aspect of this 
general destruction only thought of saving their lives, 
and threw away their arms to facilitate their flight." 

But there were some of a different stamp. Thus the 
old Patriarch of Jerusalem was dragged to the Port 
by his friends, resisting separation from his flock in their 
last agony. Nor, indeed, was he separated, since he in- 
sisted upon receiving so many fugitives into his boat 
that it sank and all were drowned. Then across the 
dark oblivious years the face of William de Clement 
shines like a star. When the Templars had abandoned 
the gate of St. Anthony he returned to it, and thrice 
charged the Saracens alone. Alive he regained the 
centre of the city. But let the old chronicler of the 
time tell the rest — 

"Quand il fut revenu an milieu de la cite, son dextrier fut 
molt las, et lui-meme aussi ; le dextrier resista en contre les 
esperons, et s'arresta dans la rue comme qui n'en peut plus. 
Les Sarrasins, a coups de fleches, ruerent a terre frere Guil- 
laume ; ainsi ce loyal champion de Jesus Christ rendit l'ame 
a son Createur." 



256 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



The phrase in the mediaeval French, " Le dextrier 
resista en contre les esperons," which I may render, 
" The war-horse grew callous to the spurs," is very curious 
and expressive. 

The end of the scene was terrible. I quote from 
Michaud. " The sea was tempestuous, the vessels could 
not approach close to land ; the shore presented a heart- 
rending spectacle; here a mother called upon her son, 
there a son called the assistance of his father, many pre- 
cipitated themselves into the waves in despair ; the mass 
of the people endeavoured to gain the vessels by swim- 
ming, some were drowned in the attempt, others were 
beaten off with oars." 

There is more and worse to follow, almost too dreadful 
for quotation, so here let us stop. The tragedies of the 
Holy Land have no number, and perhaps even now they 
are not done with. Perchance, too, it is the same tale 
everywhere in the record of this cruel, bloodstained world. 
Only here, in the Holy Land, as it happens, those among 
us — but few, I suppose — who delve in the annals of the 
past, know their history wherein, in this instance, the 
greatest interests of mankind chance to be concerned. 
The sun of the Crusaders rose in blood, and in blood it 
set. " I came to bring not peace but a sword." Truly 
in Palestine, the very place of His coming, more even 
than elsewhere, that saying has been fulfilled. Why, 
we ask, why ? our hearts stirred with common human 
pity for all those tormented dead. There is no answer, 
or none that we can understand. 

Also the subject is very painful, so we will leave it — 
and Acre. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



JAFFA 

To leave Haifa is comparatively easy, since, owing to a 
certain amount of shelter which the harbour enjoys, it 
is only in really bad storms that the traveller cannot 
embark. Thus on the night of our departure the sea 
was still high, but we managed, with some discomfort 
it is true, to win on board the steamer. To disembark 
at Jaffa is quite another thing. 

Now there are two ways of proceeding from Haifa to 
Jaffa — by sea, which, of course, is simple, in good weather ; 
or to drive a matter of sixty miles over a hideous apology 
for a road, which runs along the sea-coast. This involves 
two full days' travelling, including a start at three or 
four in the morning on the second day, and a consider- 
able expenditure, since such transport is not cheap. 
Long and anxiously did I ponder over the alternative. 
Look you, my reader, if the sea is rough at Jaffa, this 
happens. You go on to that singularly uninteresting 
place, Port Said, whence, after several days in an hotel 
at your own charges, you may, if lucky, take another 
boat back to Jaffa. Then, if the sea is still rough, you 
proceed to Beyrout, thence to return to Jaffa in a week 
or ten days' time. Then, if the sea is still rough, once 
more you visit Port Said, and so on ad nauseam. 

This is no fancy picture. We had fellow-travellers 
to whom these things happened, as they happened to 
those bold voyagers who, in face of my experienced 
advice, determined to try to land at Paphos, in Cyprus, 
an example that the reader may recall. Remembering 

257 t> 



258 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



past woes, indeed, some who tarried at Haifa went the 
length of hiring a carriage to tow them through the 
sands to Jaffa, but I reasoned with them. 

" Luck," I said, " ought to change ; it was cowardly 
to give in. The courage of man and the perseverance 
of woman ought not to he overcome by the billows that 
break on the rocks of Jaffa." They were stirred to en- 
thusiasm. Also they bethought them of that two days' 
expensive drive through quick drifts and mud-holes, 
and the 3 a.m. awakening on the second morning. 

" Listen," said a lady solemnly, " if we get off safe at 
Jaffa I shall bless you. If we don't, I never want to 
see or hear your name again." 

I replied that in either event I feared she might 
come across it some time, and we started. 

I hope that in her transatlantic home for the rest 
of her life that lady may remember me with regard, as 
I remember her. For as it chanced on this occasion, we 
landed in a fashion so prosperous — the sea having con- 
veniently gone down during the night — that even then 
instinct told me Jaffa had a card up its sleeve to be 
played some day for my especial benefit. 

This was the port most frequented by the old 
pilgrims, and concerning it their tales of woe are many. 
A pilgrimage in the Middle Ages was a very serious 
matter. No statistics are available, but a somewhat 
extensive inquiry into the subject, and the reading of 
many books, suggests to me that not more than about 
fifty per cent, of those enterprising voyagers returned 
to their respective homes, while the other half endured 
miseries that to-day we should consider overwhelming. 
Says the old monk, Felix Fabri, writing in the fifteenth 
century : — 

" O, my God ! what a hard and tedious excursion ; with how 
many sufferings was it spoiled. During this excursion I saw 
many vigorous young noblemen perish, who once had thought in 
their own conceit that they could rule the waves of the sea and 



JAFFA 



259 



weigh the lofty mountains in scales ; but who at last died by the 
just judgment of God, broken down by hardships and lamentably 
humbled in spirit. May God give those who call this pilgrimage 
an easy excursion the power of feeling its sorrows, that they may 
learn to have compassion for the pilgrims to the Holy Land 
which they deserve. It requires courage and audacity to attempt 
this pilgrimage. That many are tempted by sinful rashness 
and idle curiosity cannot be doubted; but to reach the holy 
places and to return to one's home active and well is the especial 
gift of God." 

Johann van Kootwyck, who made the pilgrimage 
about a century later than Felix Fabri, portions of whose 
work have been translated from the Latin by Cobham, 
has left advice as to the outfit necessary in his day to a 
trip through the Holy Land. It begins by recommend- 
ing the pilgrim to make a will and arrange all his 
earthly affairs, which shows what was thought of the 
prospects of his return. Then it sets out the costs of 
the passage and board upon a galley. That these were 
considerable is proved by the fact that before the licence 
of the Papal legate could be obtained the pilgrim must 
show " that he can afford to spend at the very least one 
hundred gold pieces on the journey." Now in 1598 I 
suppose that one pound went as far as three to-day, if 
not a good deal further. Therefore it would seem that 
the pilgrim must have possessed at least £300 to spend 
upon this enterprise alone — that is, supposing the gold 
piece referred to having been approximately of the value 
of a sovereign. Also he must take with him a box con- 
taining a mattress, a pillow, and a pair of sheets (these 
last seem an unnecessary luxury), which box ought to 
measure six feet long by three feet wide, so that it could 
serve as a bed. It must have looked uncommonly like a 
coffin. Perhaps the pilgrim sometimes returned inside it, 
and — good, thoughtful man — had this contingency in 
view. Then he must be provided with half - a - dozen 
shirts, although collars were not considered a necessity 



260 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



(this is specified), a sailor's cap, towels, handkerchiefs, two 
pounds of soap (this, again, seems luxurious for a pilgrim), 
" twenty pounds of the best biscuit, some good wine, cin- 
namon, ginger, nutmegs and cloves, with pomegranates, 
oranges, and lemons, also sugar and laxative medicine." 
However, he was advised to carry no arms, to wear the 
roughest clothes only, so as to avoid being robbed, and, 
above all, carefully to conceal his cash. In many parts 
of Syria this counsel holds as good now as on the day 
that it was given. 

Even when the expensive fare had been paid on the 
galley, according to friend Felix, the accommodation 
afforded would not now be considered passable by a steer- 
age passenger on a liner. 

" A pilgrim can hardly move about without touching his neigh- 
bour (that is, while sleeping) ; moreover, the place is enclosed, 
and exceeding hot and full of various foul vapours. Wherefore, 
one must needs sweat all night, which greatly mars one's rest. 
Fleas and lice swarm there at that time in countless numbers, 
also mice and rats. Oftentimes, I may say every night, I have 
risen silently and gone up into the open air, and felt as though 
I had been freed from some filthy prison." 

Then he tells of the heat of the sun, of the dark- 
ness, foul air, and overcrowding of cabins, adding " that 
although the blowing of the wind is essential to those 
who sail in a ship, yet it is very unpleasant," after which 
follows a masterly picture of sea-sickness, clearly by one 
who had experience. Next we have more about fleas, 
flies, gnats (query mosquitoes), mice, and rats, which eat 
up " the private larders " and spoil the shoes, and other 
mysterious creatures. "Moreover, the damp on board 
ship breeds fat white worms, which crawl everywhere 
and come by stealth upon men's legs and faces; and 
when a man becomes aware of them and puts his finger 
to them, thinking them flies " — the rest is too nasty to 
quote. No wonder that Felix adds : " Unless Divine 



JAFFA 



261 



Providence had thus ordered it, no man could live on 
board of large old ships." 

About the terrors of the deep he filled pages, for they 
impressed him much. Sometimes, however, although an 
acute observer and a man who loved the truth, Fabri was, 
I fear, imposed upon with travellers' tales. Listen : — 

"Yet another peril is to be met with which is called Troyp, 
from the fish Trois., which, when it becomes aware of the ship, 
comes forth from the depths and pierces the ship with his beak ; 
for he has a beak fashioned like an augur, and unless he be 
driven away from the ship he bores through it. He cannot be 
forced away from the ship save by a fearless look, so that one 
should lean out of the ship over the water, and unflinchingly look 
into the eyes of the fish, while the fish meanwhile looks at him 
with a terrible gaze. If he who looks at the fish grows terrified 
and begins to turn his eyes away, the beast straightway rises, 
snatches him down beneath the water and devours him. Let 
this suffice about the perils of the sea." 

Imagination fondly pictures the pious Felix and that 
fish trying to stare each other out of countenance. Per- 
haps " Trois " had something to do with the Jaffa legend 
that here Andromeda was bound and rescued from the 
dragon. Of this story Sir John Mandeville (1322) has 
made a most marvellous hash : — 

" And you shall understand that it ( Joppa) is one of the oldest 
towns of the world, for it was founded before Noah's flood. And 
there may still be seen in the rock there the place where the iron 
chains were fastened, wherewith Andromeda, a great giant (sic), 
was bound and put in prison before Noah's flood ; a rib of whose 
side, which is forty feet long, is still shown." 

This is a downright libel on Andromeda, that fair 
maid whom we see in every Academy, often three 
times over, attended by a pleasing variety of dragons. 
Still, if some artist would paint her, or him, according 
to Mandeville, the change would be refreshing. 

Felix, a man of learning, has the legend much more 



262 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



correctly, but even he talks of "the virgin giantess, 
Andromeda." Evidently, also, there was something in 
Mandeville's story of the bone, since Felix says : — 

" The bones of that sea monster which Perseus slew were of 
vast size, and used to be publicly on the beach over against the 
city, and were shown to all who visited Joppa ; but afterwards 
they were removed from thence to Rome by Titus and Ves- 
pasian, and hung up in a public place for a marvel, for, indeed, 
they were worthy of admiration, for every one of its ribs were 
forty-one feet in length. But Saint Sylvester, and the other 
saints who consecrated Rome to Christ, broke up those bones 
and all other marvels, lest pilgrims should come hither to see 
them, and likewise lest pilgrims who had come to Rome for the 
sake of honouring God and His Apostles should lose their time 
and waste hours which might be spent in prayer in viewing such 
strange sights. Some declare that these were the bones of the 
virgin giantess Andromeda, which seems impossible, because Per- 
seus took Andromeda away with him into Persia, and ended his 
days there, and we nowhere read of his coming back to Joppa." 

It will be observed that Felix does not question the 
authenticity of the bones because their dimensions are 
somewhat unusual, but because Perseus took his wife 
to live with him elsewhere and did not bring her back. 
The vision of a lady who measured eighty- two feet (not 
inches) round the waist does not seem to have struck his 
imagination as a thing particularly out of the common. 
Nor did he consider it from the point of view of her 
husband Perseus, or, indeed, of the poor dragon who 
was expected to eat her. 

Josephus also mentions the matter, but in a very 
different style ; his was not an age of fable. - He says : — 

"Here is the impression of Andromeda's chain, which is 
supposed to have been cut in the rock with a view to giving 
credibility to the ancient fable." 

In truth these old chroniclers, whether for fact or 
fiction, are very fascinating to read. In their pages we 



JAFFA 



263 



are transported to a realm strangely real yet fanciful. 
There, like the figments of some dream, peoples and 
rulers long departed pass in shadowy procession before 
our eyes. The things they strove for, their ambitions, 
their rare virtues, their bloody crimes are matters to 
muse on in an idle hour — no more. They have gone, 
utterly; all their tumults and battlings are dust, for 
the most part unfruitful as that of their own bones. 
Their very names are forgotten, not one in a million 
is known, and of these how many are remembered even 
by students ? Yet the sea of Jaffa which affrighted 
them still hisses by the vessel's side, the narrow Via 
Dolorosa upon the holy hill of Zion, that they trod— 
some of them with sighs and tears, or, some of them, 
"up to their horses' knees in blood" — still lies open 
to our feet. The pale olives of Gethsemane beneath 
which they knelt still flower and fruit upon the Mount. 
The stage is the same, only the actors have changed. 
That ancient frame does continual duty to new pictures 
which the showman Time throws upon his screen. Here 
the series grows long, stretching from the day of Moses 
down. But how many more of them are there to come, 
those strange for th-shado wings of generations yet unborn, 
not to be born, perhaps, for thousands upon thousands 
of years, so deep in time that to them we may seem 
further off than Moses is to us ? Well, such specula- 
tions lead nowhere, so let us return to our own particular 
pilgrimage experienced in our own individual hour. 

The embarkation at Haifa was disagreeable, and the 
night on board was crowded, circumstances that added 
to our joy when we found the morning fine, and were 
therefore relieved of the terror of being carried on pre- 
maturely to Port Said. This was the second time in 
my life that I have passed through the grinning jaws 
of the Jaffa reefs. Once a good many years ago when 
I chanced to be off this port, I landed and spent a day 
there, just to be able to think that I had trodden the 



264 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



soil of the Holy Land. I remember on this occasion 
witnessing a furious quarrel betweem a custom-house 
guard in a boat and a washerwoman bringing off clean 
linen to a ship in another boat. The guard wanted to 
seize the linen, or probably to extort baksheesh, but the 
lady defended her goods with a shrill and voluble tongue, 
calling this representative of the Ottoman law unsavoury 
names, and reflecting upon his parents for several gene- 
rations back. Indeed, as her boat bobbed up and down 
over the swell, she shook her fist beneath the watchman's 
martial nose till at length, thoroughly out-talked, he 
drew his pistol on her, and thus I left them. Now, 
oddly enough, no one seems able to tell me the end 
of the story. 

Landing at Jaffa is a tumultuous affair even in the 
best of weather, but we accomplished it without so much 
as a wetting, and were marched to the hotel where we 
had six or eight hours to wait until the train started 
for Jerusalem. 

Jaffa, the Joppa of the Bible, has much the same 
history as other coast towns in Palestine. It was taken 
by Pharaoh Thotmes III. and was the port of the Holy 
City whither in the days of Hiram came the cedar from 
Lebanon. " And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as 
much as thou shalt need ; and we will bring it thee in 
floats by sea to Joppa, and thou shalt carry it up to J eru- 
salem." And again in Ezra : " They gave money also 
unto the masons and to the carpenters ; and meat and 
drink and oil unto them of Zidon, and to them of Tyre, to 
bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, accord- 
ing to the grant that they had of Cyrus, king of Persia." 

The Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans were its 
masters, all in turn ; several times it has been razed — 
by Cestius, by Vespasian, by Melik-el-Adil twice, by 
Safaddin, by Richard of England, by Beibars, by Napoleon. 
In the time of Felix Fabri the place, of which he says, 
" I believe that there is hardly another such abominable 



JAFFA 



265 



harbour to be found in the whole circuit of the sea," 
seems to have been almost a total ruin. At any rate, 
the only lodging for the pilgrim was " a darksome and 
decayed dwelling beneath a ruinous vault, known as St. 
Peter's cellars, wherein the Saracens thrust him, even 
as men are wont to thrust a sheep into a stable to be 
milked." As the place was full of the most abominable 
filth, we learn with satisfaction that " in this cavern there 
is a seven years' indulgence, which the pilgrim obtains 
if he enters therein with a devout spirit." 

There is very little to see in Jaffa, although the 
traveller is shown the roof upon which St. Peter slept 
when the vision of things clean and unclean came to 
him, as he " tarried many days in Joppa with one 
Simon a tanner." This site, as Baedeker points out, 
has been changed of late years; formerly it was at the 
Latin monastery, now it is over a little mosque. It 
seems probable that there is nothing to prove the 
authenticity of either spot. How can there be in a 
town which has been destroyed so many times ? What 
is authentic and unchangeable, however, is the heap of 
dirt outside the door of the sacred building. After 
many years I knew the sight of it again ; also its 
noisome scent floated into my nostrils like some sweet 
remembered odour of earliest childhood. There it lies, 
that miniature but ancestral midden, and there, doubtless, 
it will lie from generation to generation until the Turk 
departs from the coasts of Syria. 

Thence we drove to the Greek church, where the 
visitor is shown what is said to be the tomb of Tabitha 
and the place where Peter "gave her his hand and 
lifted her up, and . . . presented her alive," so that " it 
was known throughout all Joppa, and many believed 
in the Lord." The tomb seems to be some ancient 
catacomb, but whether or no the bones of Tabitha 
reposed in it, who can tell ? 

When last I was here, as I have noted was the 



266 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



case at Famagusta, in Cyprus, the orange groves were 
beautiful to behold. Now ninety trees out of every 
hundred are diseased, though I am not sure that the 
pest which is destroying them is the same as has de- 
vastated Cyprus. I am inclined to think that they 
are more afflicted by some sickness of the root than 
with the brown and black scale. At least the results 
are identical — thousands of them are dying. 

In the Armenian monastery there is a room, if any 
care to look at it, where a peculiarly dreadful tragedy is 
said to have occurred, that of the poisoning of a number 
of his own soldiers who were smitten with the plague, by 
order of Napoleon the Great, when he retreated from 
Jaffa in 1799. It seems probable, however, that this story 
is exaggerated. According to Batjin's " Napoleon l er ," 
the only history of the emperor which I have at hand, 
the men were not poisoned. But, as it was determined to 
leave them behind, to enable them to escape massacre at 
the hand of the Turks, poison was placed by their bedsides, 
which they could swallow if they thought fit. 

Napoleon is represented as having said, " Je serais 
toujours dispose a faire pour mes soldats ce que je ferais 
pour mon propre fils," a sentiment which, considering the 
occasion, will make most people thankful that Provi- 
dence did not do them the honour of appointing to them 
this distinguished parent. M. Batjin, we may gather, 
does not share that view, since the heading of the 
chapter under which he deals with this gruesome in- 
cident is " nouvel example de sa (Bonaparte's) sollicitude 
pour les pestiferes." One wonders if the poor " pesti- 
feres," before partaking of the bane so thoughtfully 
provided in order to save their beloved general the 
trouble of their transport, defined his sympathetic fore- 
sight in exactly the same words. 

Like many other men whom we call " great," Napoleon 
did not stick at trifles. Some pages back I talked of the 
performance of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, when he caused 



JAFFA 



267 



whole regiments of captive Saracens to be massacred 
outside Acre, and added, I think, that such acts tended 
to blight the reader's ideal of the vaunted chivalry of the 
period. At the moment I had forgotten that but one 
century ago the same thing happened outside Jaffa, 
Bonaparte, possibly inspired by his example, but with 
even less excuse, filling the role of Richard of England. 
There, on those shell-strewn sands, he marched out his 
captives and butchered them, " taking precautions to 
prevent any escaping." M. Batjin's sole comment upon 
the occurrence, so far as I can discover, is : " La ville fut 
prise d'assaut, le meme jour a cinq heurs du soir, 4000 
hommes de la garnison furent passe par les armes." 
Clearly our author thinks it well to be a little blind 
to such lapses of the national hero into mediae valism. 

If all the trains that leave Charing Cross in the course 
of a busy day were to start during one single hour, I do 
not suppose that the sum of the noise and confusion 
would equal that which occurs at the station at Jaffa 
when the daily tram — it is scarcely more — gets itself 
off for Jerusalem. Heavens ! how those dusky, untamed 
sons of the desert fight and yell. How they stagger to 
and fro beneath the boxes, hurling them to earth here, 
there, and everywhere. How they clamour for baksheesh ! 
How they rush to procure seats for their various patrons 
and demand more baksheesh! What life, what excite- 
ment, what turmoil, what arguments, what deadly feuds ! 
What vociferations on the part of the officials ! But 
we get off somehow in a very crowded carriage, and 
the various dragomen, clad in their best attire for the 
entry into Jerusalem, explain, as their command of 
English or French gives them grace, the wonders through 
which we are passing. 

Here is the fertile plain of Sharon looking rather 
desolate beneath its cloak of windy wet. There is the 
place where the ark was set up in the temple of Dagon 
to the dire discomfiture of the Philistines, who suffered 



268 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



so sorely from its presence and found it so difficult to be 
rid of. Yonder, according to all traditions, Samson tied 
torches to the tails of a vast number of foxes — I think it 
was three hundred. This feat leaves the modern wonder- 
ing how he managed to snare so many all at once, for 
in any time or country to catch a fox is not easy. There, 
too, in that village he was born, and there he died. 

Old Testament history, studied from the windows of 
a railway carriage, becomes, it must be confessed, a little 
confusing. But without doubt this was the territory of 
the Philistines, and the fact brings home to the mind 
how very small is the area wherein were enacted the 
great events recorded in the Bible. Soon the plains are 
left behind, and we begin to climb the mountains that 
lie about Jerusalem like a wall. Barren hill succeeds 
barren hill. Perhaps once they were clothed with vine- 
yards ; now only flowering cyclamen grow in the crannies 
of the rocks. 

At length, about six o'clock, the train pulls up, and 
once more fierce confusion begins to reign. We have 
reached Jerusalem. The mountain wind blows bitterly ; 
the rain falls in torrents, and everywhere one steps in 
liquid mud. Sometimes it is two, sometimes four, some- 
times six inches deep ; the experienced choose the two- 
inch strata, the flurried wallow in the six-inch depths. 
The local Cook appears, drags us into a carriage, and off 
we flounder. Presently, what looks like a mediaeval 
tower rises before us. We are informed that it is the 
castle of David, now the Turkish citadel, which is believed 
to be, at any rate so far as its foundations are concerned, 
the Phasael built by Herod, one of the few places that 
Titus did not destroy when he sacked the town and 
burned the temple. We pass through the Jaffa gate 
and the walls built by the Saracens, that still give to 
Jerusalem the appearance of a strongly-fortified, mediaeval 
city, and so, by streets which we cannot distinguish in 
the wet and gathering gloom, to our hotel. 



JAFFA 



269 



Next morning we awoke to the sound of a roaring 
gale and of rain dashing against the window, such rain 
as, according to Bishop Arculf, who visited Jerusalem 
about the year 700, "exhibits God's peculiar attach- 
ment to this place" by washing out the streets after 
an annual fair. It was cold also, bitterly cold ; almost 
might the traveller have fancied himself once more 
in Florence. I clad myself very warmly, topping up 
with a covert coat and a macintosh, but when David 
saw me as we prepared to start upon our expedition, 
he said it would not do at all, that I did not under- 
stand the climate of Jerusalem, and must put on my 
ulster also. I obeyed, and before I returned thanked 
him for his advice. 

In places the narrow lanes of Jerusalem were 
running inches deep with water beneath the lashing 
of the torrents which, as Arculf remarks, provides them 
with their only washing. Indeed, they are filthy, 
almost as filthy as those of Tiberias, if such a thing 
be possible, especially in quarters inhabited by the 
Jews, where none should linger. We passed through 
the crowded bazaars, now reeking in a damp, cold 
mist that seemed to embalm the smells, accompanied 
by a cavass from the Consulate and a soldier, whose 
protection is supposed to be necessary to the visitor 
to the Haram-esh-Sherif, the Noble Sanctuary, where 
once stood the temples and palaces of Solomon and 
Herod. It is approached, or, at least, we approached 
it, by a kind of covered-in alley of a filthiness so 
peculiar and surpassing that before it everything else 
of the kind which I have seen in the Holy Land 
sinks its ineffectual stench. Imagine a people who are 
content that so foul an avenue should lead to their great 
sanctuary. 

We went up steps, and were within the sacred 
area. It is a great place covering many acres — I 
never heard their number — but much of it is overgrown 



270 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



with grass, amongst which were blooming blue flowers 
like those of borage. Just now, also, it was sodden 
with rain — very grey and desolate to the eye beneath 
the low, scudding clouds. 

It was with curious feelings that at length I set 
foot upon this hill-top, the womb, as it were, of the 
world's fate, where have been enacted so many of the 
most awful scenes of history, spiritual and human. 
Here the Ark stood. Here great Solomon built his 
fane without sound of saw or hammer, that fane which 
was to be destroyed and re-arise, again to be destroyed 
and again arise. Here at last dawned the light of 
that predestined day when the Roman eagles were 
borne across it, and the hallowed temple of Jehovah 
went up in sheets of fire to Heaven. Here the Veil 
was rent, and the Sanctuary desecrated, while the 
blood of its votaries ran ankle - deep into the vaults 
below. Men have worshipped here by millions. They 
have perished here by tens and twenties of thousands. 
The voice of Christ has echoed here. The shouts of the 
victors, the screams of the conquered, the moans of the 
dying, the solemn sounds of sacrifice, the blare of cere- 
monial trumpets, the daily whisper of a people's reverent 
prayer — it has heard them all in turn. Here stood 
Solomon in his glory, and all the congregation of Israel 
before the Ark of the Lord, in which was nothing " save 
the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb." 
Here " the cloud filled the House of the Lord," and 
Solomon said, " I have surely built thee a house to 
dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in for ever." 
Here he prayed "that thine eyes may be opened 
towards this house night and day." Here, too, came 
the answer when Jehovah appeared to the king a 
second time, that his petition should be fulfilled while 
the men of Israel and their children remain faithful. 
But if not, " then will I cut off Israel out of the land 
which I have given them; and this house, which I 



JAFFA 



271 



have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my 
sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a by-word 
among all people : And at this house, which is high, 
every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall 
hiss ; and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus 
unto this land, and to this house ? " 

Are they not astonished, and do not the nations of 
the earth speak thus to-day when the high home of God 
has become a chief tabernacle of the false prophet, where 
the Christian is admitted under guard and on sufferance, 
and the Jew, whose heritage it is, may not so much as 
set his foot ? 



CHAPTER XIX 



THE NOBLE SANCTUARY, THE POOLS OF SOLOMON 
AND BETHLEHEM 

The Mosque of the Rock, known as the Noble Sanc- 
tuary, where once stood the Temple of the Jews, is a 
beautiful building, even to those who, like myself, do 
not particularly admire the oriental style of architecture ; 
also it is already ancient. At its door a Mahommedan 
priest received us, and rough wrappings of sackcloth were 
bound about our feet, which, as they were wet through 
and cold, to me were comfortable. Then we entered the 
place, where we found ourselves quite alone. It is spa- 
cious with a great dome ; its windows are full of lovely 
and ancient stained glass ; its walls set with harmonious 
Eastern tiles ; its floors covered with rich carpets. Un- 
derneath the dome, fifty feet or more in length, sur- 
rounded by an old iron screen and one of wood, stands 
the sabred rock, where Abraham is said to have made 
ready Isaac for slaughter, where, too, as seems to be 
generally admitted, stood the Jewish altar of Sacrifice 
for many generations. Indeed there is a hole pierced 
through its centre that received, it is thought, the 
blood of the victims, which was carried away by the 
drains beneath. 

Some fine, natural instinct, or perhaps a priestly tra- 
dition, caused the Hebrews to leave that rock untouched. 
Except for the steps cut on it by the Crusaders it is 
much as Nature made it in the beginning, and doubtless 
so it will remain until the end. Millions of years ago it 
was heaved up in the first cataclysms of the universe. 



THE NOBLE SANCTUARY 278 



Thousands, or millions of years hence it will crumble 
and disappear in the last general catastrophe. The 
sacred associations that make it famous above every 
other stone in the world — even that of Mecca — will 
cling, as it were, to but one hour of the immeasur- 
able seons during which it is destined to endure. 
Through long, long epochs it must have been but a rock 
upon a mountain breast. Through other epochs yet to 
come again it may be but a rock upon a mountain 
breast. But for two thousand years or so it was the 
Altar of God, that atom of His wide creation from which 
His chosen people offered Him praise and incense, sym- 
bolised in their burnt sacrifices. This rugged mass of 
stone impressed me more than all the vaunted glories 
of the Noble Sanctuary. Also it is a true relic. The 
courts, the walls, the columns, they have vanished every 
one. No trace of them is left above the ground. Yet that 
rock of ages still remains, the only thing, as I suppose, 
connected with their worship which has witnessed the 
history of the Jews almost from the beginning, that still 
witnesses it, and will in some far age witness its end, 
whatever that end may be. 

We saw many things in the mosque. For instance, 
there is the cavern beneath the rock, with places where 
David and Solomon used to pray, and a round hole 
above, made, we were solemnly assured, by the head of 
Mahomet as he went up to heaven like a cannon-ball. 
This hole, however, as I believe, has to do with the blood 
channels from the altar of Sacrifice. The Mussulmen say 
that at the last Judgment the Almighty will take His 
seat upon this rock, and that beneath the cavern is the 
Pit of Spirits, where on certain days in every week the 
deceased assemble to their devotions. Visitors to the 
Noble Sanctuary hear many such stories, most of them 
connected with the Prophet, all of which must be listened 
to with becoming gravity and reverence. For my part, 
I found the task trying, as, without indorsing friend 

s 



274 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



Felix's vigorous views, 1 I chance to hold strong opinions 
upon the subject of this prophet, whose doctrines will, I 
believe, cause even more bloodshed and misery in the 
world in the future than they have brought upon it in 
the past. It is, however, a part of the experience. 

Among other things we were shown a jstone slab 
into which Mahomet, who, by the way, I believe was 
never here in the flesh, hammered nineteen golden 
nails. At the end of every century, or upon the occur- 
rence of any very important event, the devil removes one 
of these nails. He has now got them all except three 
and a half, for the angel Gabriel just caught him in 
time and caused him to break one in his hurry. When 
he succeeds in abstracting the rest, the world will come 
to a sudden end, or thus say the Mahommedans. What 
a chance is here for that practically-minded traveller 
of whose dealings with an ancient lamp I have already 
told the tale. Picture the faces of the faithful when 
next morning they found those last nails gone, and the 
end of all things coming up like a torpedo-boat under a 
full head of steam. Only he might find these warlike 
Moslems more difficult to deal with than proved the poor 
old priest. 

Our holy guide intimated to me that by placing 
money upon this nail-stone I should assure my eternal 
safety. Accordingly I purchased salvation to the value 
of ninepence in small change, which he pocketed. Then 
we went on and saw more wonders. 

Leaving the Mosque of the Dome, we visited the 

1 At this time Mahomet, the devil incarnate, the first-born of Asmo- 
deus, the son of Belial, the messenger of Satan, the deceiver of the 
world, the confusion of mankind, the destroyer of the Church of God, the 
false prophet, the forerunner of Antichrist, yea, Antichrist himself, the 
fulfilment of heresies, the corrupter of the divine laws, the persecutor of 
the faithful, and the miracle of all that is false, began to display his mad- 
ness, that the lamentable prophecy set forth in Revelations xiii. about 
him might be fulfilled, because he was that horrible and detestable beast 
whom John saw rising out of the earth, having two horns — and so forth. 
— The Book of the Wanderings of Brother Felix Fabri. 



THE NOBLE SANCTUARY 275 



Dome of the Chain, a beautiful little building which is 
called David's Judgment-seat, and also the Dome of the 
Ascension, a memorial of another of the miracles of 
Mahomet. Then we were shown the entrances to 
various cisterns, especially a vast reservoir which must 
have existed in the time of our Lord, that is known as 
" The Sea." This used to be supplied with water from 
Solomon's Pools, that lie at a distance of several miles 
from Jersualem. Next we came to the Mosque el- 
Aksa, known, too, as the Mosque of Omar, because that 
Caliph defiled it, converting it from a Christian church 
into a place of worship according to the Prophet. It 
is still very beautiful, with a nave, aisles, and a basilica, 
which were built by the Emperor Justinian to serve as 
a shrine to the Virgin. Here we were regaled with 
more Mahommedan legends, a well being shown to us 
down which some good man went after a fallen bucket, 
contrary to every expectation to find himself in Paradise. 
Also, there are two columns set close together, and he^ 
who cannot squeeze between them has no hope of 
Heaven. It seems, however, that so many stout Moslems 
got set fast or injured themselves in their mad attempt 
to pass where natural curves would not permit, that 
now the practice is forbidden, and the space between 
the columns has been shut off with a railing. 

Such follies were not always confined to Mahomme- 
dans, however, since Felix Fabri mentions that about the 
year 1480 there was a place between a pillar and a wall, 
I think, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, through 
which pilgrims tried to squeeze. Those who succeeded 
received a considerable remission of their purgatorial 
pains, especially promised and guaranteed by those who 
had control of the matter. 

The pulpit in this mosque is a rich miracle of good 
carving. It dates from 1168, and is said to have been 
presented by Saladin. 

Leaving the Mosque of Omar we descended into 



276 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



vast crypt-like vaults, which are called Solomon's stables, 
though experts declare that they were rebuilt in Sara- 
cenic times. It is, however, quite possible that the 
horses of the Jewish kings once stood in these caverns. 
Indeed I have noticed how common it is in the East 
to use caves or underground places as a stable, probably 
because these are cooler in summer. Whoever built 
or rebuilt them, certainly the Crusaders made use of 
this sub- structure, for holes bored in angles of the 
columns can still be seen through which ran their halter 
ropes. In a passage leading to these vaults we were 
shown gigantic blocks of stone which, I suppose, were 
put in place by Phoenician workmen in the days of 
Solomon. That they could be moved at all without 
the aid of modern machinery is little short of wonderful. 

Having inspected everything, at length we emerged 
by a narrow stairway into the open, and walked across 
a great expanse of the temple field to the eastern wall. 
It was soaked with rain, but as I went I could not 
help remembering that there were periods in its history 
when it has been as wet as this with blood. Here in 
one day fell 8500 men in a struggle between the Zealots 
and the party of John during the siege by Titus. Here 
too, at the conclusion of that siege, a motley multitude 
of 6000 were shrivelled up in the conflagration of the 
royal cloister, while 10,000 others were slaughtered 
without by the Roman soldiery. 

Mounting the walls by steps built in them, we 
could see beneath us the Valley of Jehoshaphat, with 
its thousands of tombs covering the dust of Jews who 
have been brought hither for burial. A very ancient 
tradition among both Christians and Moslems tells that 
here will be the scene of the last Judgment. It is 
founded, I suppose, upon the verses in Joel : " Let the 
heathen be wakened (new version : Let the nations be- 
stir themselves) and come up to the Valley of Jehos- 
haphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen 



THE NOBLE SANCTUARY 277 

(new version : All the nations) round about. . . . Mul- 
titudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the 
day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The 
sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars 
shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar 
out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem ; and 
the heavens and the earth shall shake." 

Then the prophet goes on to tell that thereafter 
Jerusalem shall be holy, "and there shall no strangers 
pass through her any more." 

In the day of Felix Fabri the Saracens of Palestine 
already held this belief, though the Arabs placed the 
last Judgment at Mecca, and the Syrians selected 
Damascus. Those who put their faith in the Valley of 
Jehoshaphat said that there would be three Judges — 
the Almighty, the Christ, and Mahomet. The First 
Person was to be seated on the pinnacle of the temple, 
the Second Person on the top of the Mount of Olives, 
while the Prophet, present in the capacity of a coun- 
cillor, would take his place upon a piece of broken 
column, which to this day still projects from the wall 
of the Haram. Another tradition is that Christ and 
Mahomet will be the judges, Mahomet occupying a place 
upon the Mount of Olives. Between the Mount and 
the column, spanning the Valley of Jehoshaphat, will 
stretch a rope, over which every soul must pass. The 
fate of the wicked may be guessed, but the righteous will 
go across with the ease of a Blondin. 

About this broken pillar — I wonder, by the way, how 
it can possibly have come into its present position — 
Felix tells a curious story with which I do not remember 
meeting elsewhere. Not long before his time a certain 
Saracen prophet came to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, 
followed by all the people of the city, to whom he pro- 
mised that he would show to them details hitherto 
unknown concerning the last Judgment. To that end 
" this child of the devil " climbed up to the broken pillar 



278 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



by help of ladders, and, seating himself astride upon it 
with his back to the wall, began to prophesy. Unfor- 
tunately for himself, evidently he was a preacher with 
action, and, forgetting the dangerous nature of his seat, 
yielded to the excitement of the moment, and began to 
fling about his arms. Now, this column, as we still 
may see, has been highly polished, and presently there 
happened to that unfortunate expounder of the last 
Judgment an accident such as is apt to chance to care- 
less people who ride with loose girths. Suddenly he 
slipped, and, his seat being so smooth, was quite unable 
to recover himself. One frantic, ineffectual grasp, and 
where his head had been appeared his heels ; then down 
he came, and was smashed like an egg in the Valley 
of Jehoshaphat, a catastrophe over which Felix does not 
seem to grieve. " The silly people," he remarks, " were 
confounded, and went back into the city, every man to 
his own home. Thus did the false prophet, contrary to 
his intention, show them the proof not by words but 
by deeds." 

Felix mentions also, in another volume, that in his 
day there was a Moslem cemetery in the valley, opposite 
to the Golden Gate, to which he was not allowed to 
approach. Formerly, it seems, the Latins and Armenians 
celebrated an annual festival at this gate, through which 
our Lord is said to have passed on the first Palm Sunday, 
u until, at the instigation of the devil, the Saracens began 
to bury their damned dead here, after which they blocked 
up the gate." 

" Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision." 
Standing on that lofty wall, and looking northwards, what 
a picture is called up ! The wide white-tombed valley full 
of dead, the naked mountains beyond choked with dead 
standing rank above rank even in the empty air till their 
number joins earth to heaven ; the myriad dead of every 
age and generation come hither unto judgment. From 
the countless graves below, from the way of the sea, from 



THE NOBLE SANCTUARY 279 



each acre of earth's surface, dead, dead, nothing but dead, 
rushing on to judgment in the gorge of Jehoshaphat. 
" Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision." And 
above, facing each other in the sick heaven, the black 
balls of the sun and moon discerned by the light of 
the flaring, shivering, dying stars ! 

Walking along the wall we came to the Golden 
Gate, which by some is believed to be the Beautiful 
Gate spoken of in the Acts. No man goes through it 
for it is built up. Here passed Christ, while the people 
cried Hosanna and threw palms upon His path. The 
Mahommedans have a belief that on a certain Friday, 
none know when, a Christian conqueror will enter by 
this gate and hunt them from Jerusalem for ever. Per- 
haps that is why they wall it up. In itself the building 
is striking, but I will not attempt its detailed description. 
Experts say that in its present form it dates from the 
Byzantine period. 

At length we had visited everything we were allowed 
to look at, and turned for a while to contemplate the 
whole expanse of this great and sacred place that has 
seen so much, and for aught we know, has still so much 
to see. Then we parted from our guide and guard with 
mutual compliments, pointed in a manner best under- 
stood in the East, and returned to the city, following the 
tortuous line of the Via Dolorosa. Along this street the 
Saviour is supposed to have borne His cross — indeed, by 
tablets and otherwise, each " station * is recorded to an 
inch, upon what authority I have not been able to dis- 
cover. Still millions have accepted and continue to 
accept the tradition. 

Afterwards we visited what is now shown as the Pool 
of Bethesda. I cannot say if it is the true site which 
has been claimed for other springs. This is certain, 
however, that it agrees very closely with the conditions 
described in the Gospels. Many steps lead to this dark- 
some pool— to be accurate, there are two pools. The 



280 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



steepness of these steps make it evident that no maimed 
or impotent person could have climbed down them 
quickly without assistance. It is possible, however, 
that here were nothing but cisterns, fed by some under- 
ground fountain. Above are the remains of a chapel, 
discovered, I understand, in the course of recent ex- 
cavations, and built apparently during the crusading 
period. 

Our next expedition of importance was to the Pools 
of Solomon, about six miles from Jerusalem, which once 
they helped to supply with water. Now the aqueduct is 
broken, and practically the only water in the city is 
obtained from cisterns that are filled by the rains. 
So long as these cisterns remain clean their water is 
good, but they are not always clean. Also towards 
the end of summer the supply fails. Then there is 
much sickness. 

It is said, I believe with truth, that some years ago 
the Baroness Burdett-Coutts offered to restore the broken 
aqueduct at a cost of about £20,000. Thereupon the 
Turkish authorities, wishing to profit by this strange folly 
of a Frank, asked for another £3000 baksheesh in return 
for the honour that must accrue to a stranger who, at 
her own expense, proposed to provide their city with a 
supply of pure water. I am glad to say that, according 
to the story, the Baroness refused to submit to this 
imposition. Subsequently, after the pause common in 
the East, it was intimated to her that her original offer 
would be accepted. To this she is reported to have 
replied that she had now spent the money in building 
or endowing a church in England. As a result, Jeru- 
salem remains, and is likely to remain, without any 
constant supply of drinking water. 

Here it is the same in every case. A gentleman who 
is resident in the city told me that he had applied for 
leave to mend at his own expense a hole in the road run- 
ning past his house. The answer was that he must pay 



THE POOLS OF SOLOMON 281 



for the privilege. The Sultan, it was explained to him, 
could mend his own road if he liked, or, if it pleased 
his Imperial Wisdom, could leave it unmended. In the 
issue he left it unmended. 

We drove out through the Jaffa Gate, past the Hill 
of Evil Council, where Caiaphas and his colleagues are 
said to have decided upon the destruction of the Saviour. 
On a ridge above stands a tortured-looking wind-bent 
tree, apparently an oak, to which Judas is reported to 
have hanged himself. In the account by Bishop Arculf, 
as taken down by Adaman, the Abbot of the Isle of 
Iona, upon which he was shipwrecked on his return 
from the East in the days of the Northumbrian king 
Alfred — that is, at the end of the seventh century — 
the Judas tree was shown upon much the same spot. 
Arculf, however, describes it as a large fig-tree, and 
that it is not still a fig I am unable to assert with 
confidence, for we did not go close enough to verify its 
species. Mandeville, 600 years later, speaks of it as 
an elder-tree, but Sir John can scarcely be counted as 
an authority on this or any other matter. 

Further on we came to the little building that is 
shown as the tomb of Rachel, of which the site at any 
rate appears to have been accepted for many centuries. 
Certainly she must have been buried very near by, for 
Jacob says in Genesis : " And as for me, when I came 
from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan 
in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come 
unto Ephrath : and I buried her there in the way of 
Ephrath ; the same is Bethlehem." 

Leaving Bethlehem to be visited on our return, we 
drove to the Pools of Solomon. They are splendid 
reservoirs, three of them, lying one below the other, 
fed from the spring known as the Sealed Fountain 
and other sources. Of the three pools the first is the 
smallest, and the last, which is nearly two hundred yards 
long by fifty broad and sixteen deep, is the largest. I 



282 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



am ignorant who built them, Solomon or another, but 
Pontius Pilate is said to have restored them, and once 
they fed Jerusalem with water. Now, as I have told, 
the conduit is broken, so the water runs no further 
than Bethlehem. Also I noticed that, like everything 
else in this land, the pools themselves are falling into 
disrepair. Thus the sluices connecting two of them, I 
think the first and second, are broken down, so that 
the water is forced to find its way by an overground 
channel of its own. Upon the day of our visit a furious 
gale was blowing which caused the waves to dash over 
the retaining wall of the pools, as though they had been 
born in the depths of a veritable sea. Studied from 
below the effect was very striking. 

Near to the head of the first pool is a large castle- 
like building, as usual in ruins, said to have been erected 
300 or 400 years ago as a protection against Arab tribes. 
I pushed the rough door aside and entered. In the 
gateway an old goose was sitting which hissed at me, 
and beyond were the ruins of many walls and chambers 
mixed up with an attempt at a muddy garden. Except 
for this goose the place was quite deserted. 

From Solomon's Pools we drove to Bethlehem, now 
a crowded, narrow-streeted little town, for the most part 
inhabited by Christians. In front of the church of St 
Mary, which covers the traditional and, as I believe, the 
undisputed spot of the Nativity of our Lord, is a large 
flagged space, bordered by tombs. Once the atrium of 
the church stood here, but this has long been destroyed 
At present the front looks like a blank wall erected by 
many builders at many ages in many different materials, 
and subsequently buttressed up. Were it not for the 
little iron cross standing at the apex of the gable, none 
would guess the sacred character of the building beyond. 

We passed in by a humble door that seems to strive 
to hide itself away in the shadow, the original main 
entrances having been bricked up in past days, I sup- 



BETHLEHEM 



28S 



pose from fear of the Turks and Bedouins. Within is a 
majestic fane, reared by the Emperor Constantine in the 
year 330, and I believe in all essentials not greatly 
changed since his day, although amongst other restora- 
tions the roof was repaired in 1482, its materials being 
given by Edward IV. and Philip of Burgundy. The 
1 transept and apse of the basilica have been walled off 
1 during the last century, so that all the visitor sees 
as he comes in is the noble, naked nave and its aisles, 
supported by pillars each hewn from a single rock. This 
part of the building is remarkable for its disrepair and 
neglected aspect. None of the Christians seem to wish 
to beautify or preserve it, for the strange reason that it 
belongs to all the Christians. Latins, Greeks, Armenians, 
each have their share in it, and therefore individually 
will do nothing, lest they should benefit the property of 
their fellow-worshippers of another shade of faith. Such 
conduct and the constant bitter quarrels that break out 
between them here, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
and everywhere throughout Palestine — what an example 
do they give to the Moslem who stands by and mocks at 
the mutual hates of these " Christian dogs " ? 

A gentleman in Jerusalem told me that not long 
ago he found a Turkish soldier on guard in some part 
of this church, where it was not usual for a sentry to 
be, and inquired of him why he was there. He pointed 
to a nail in the wall and replied — 
" It is my duty to watch that nail." 
Asked why, he explained that the Latins, or the 
Greeks, I forget which, had driven in the nail with 
a view of hanging a picture; that the rival sect had 
furiously objected, saying that it was an interference 
with their property, and wanted to pull out the nail. 
That thereupon the Turkish Government had inter- 
vened and set him to watch the nail and see that 
no picture was hung upon it, and that it was not 
pulled out. To allow the picture to be hung would 




284 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 

have been to admit the claims of those who drove in 
the nail; to allow it to be pulled out would have 
been to admit the claims of those who objected to 
the driving in of the nail. Therefore the nail must be 
preserved, and the picture must not be hung, and, to see 
that this was so, an armed sentry must watch day and 
night. For aught I know he may be watching still. At 
any rate the story is as instructive as it is true. 

Very much the same state of affairs seems to have 
prevailed in the time of Felix Fabri, who tells us 
that the Greeks owned the choir, the Latins the cave 
of the Lord's Nativity, and the Armenians an altar at 
the place of the Three Kings' Offerings. Whether they 
all of them then owned the nave and aisles jointly, I 
do not know, although I gather that they did. This 
is what he says: — 

" This church at Bethlehem is in its upper part profaned and 
desecrated, nor has it one single lamp in its upper part, neither 
in the choir nor in the nave nor in the chapels, but it stands 
like a barn without hay, an apothecary's shop without pots of 
drugs, or library without books ; the precious pictures are drop- 
ping from the walls, and there is no one to restore them. Yet 
we are thankful that the body of the church is still standing." 

Felix, who could be very credulous where Christian 
wonders are concerned, relates some strange and pleasing 
stories about this church. One of them is to the effect 
that the " Sojdan " came to the Place of the Nativity 
to destroy it. The destruction commenced accordingly, 
but the Soldan, noting the excellence of the carved 
slabs, and of the columns, ordered that they should be 
removed to be put to other purposes. Then — " Oh ! 
miracle and prodigy meet to be proclaimed among the 
faithful" — while the workmen were at the £ask under 
the eye of their master — 

" Out of the unbroken, solid wall, which it seemed that 
even a needle could not pierce, there came forth a serpent of 



BETHLEHEM 



285 



wondrous size, who bent his head back against the wall, and 
gave a bite to the first marble slab, and split it with his fiery 
tongue." 

Vires acquirit eundo — for, put upon his mettle by 
the smashing of these slabs, the said serpent leapt next 
into the chapel of the Three Kings, " ran along that 
highly-polished wall whereon not even a spider could 
plant its feet, split forty slabs in two and disappeared." 

After this the reader will not marvel that the Soldan 
was astounded, and abandoning his predatory purposes, 
got out of the church as fast as he could go. The tracks 
of the serpent, however, which looked as though "hot 
irons had been held against the stones " — possibly they 
had, but this does not seem to have occurred to honest 
Felix — remained in his day. Indeed he informs us that 
" I beheld the traces of this miracle with great pleasure, 
and often looked curiously upon them with inward 
wonderment." 

To return from wandering with the fascinating Felix. 
After admiring the nave and aisles we passed into the 
transept and apse, where we saw the gorgeous altars 
of the various sects, and alongside the Latin church of 
St. Catherine. Then we went down some steps into the 
chapel of the Nativity. It is lighted by many lamps, 
of a good size and marble -lined throughout. Beneath 
an altar, a plain silver star is let into the pavement, and 
with it the inscription Hie de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus 
natus est. 

This, according to all traditions, is I believe the holy 
and undisputed spot of the birth of the Saviour upon 
earth. It is best not to attempt to record the reflections 
to which the sight of it gives rise ; each reader can guess 
them for himself. Close at hand, at the foot of a few 
steps, is a kind of trench lined with marble, said to be the 
site of the manger in which the Lord was laid, the original 
(of course discovered by the Empress Helena) having 



286 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



been despatched to Rome. If the one spot is authentic, 
so doubtless is the other, but I could wish that both of 
them had been left with a little less of ornamentation and 
marble linings. This remark, however, applies to almost 
every holy site in Palestine, except that of which I have 
spoken, of the Transfiguration upon Mount Tabor, and 
one other place, not in the Church of the Holy Sepul- 
chre, which I hope to describe presently, where, as I 
believe, Christ was crucified. 

Afterwards we visited more underground caverns, 
such as the Chapel of the Innocents, where some of 
them are said to have been massacred or buried, I am 
not sure which, and the chapel cut in the rock where St. 
Jerome lived for many years and wrote his works. Then 
I returned alone to the Chapel of the Nativity, which I 
was so fortunate as as to find quite empty, and stood 
there awhile, listening to the solemn, swelling sound of 
the chanting monks as they marched from shrine to shrine 
through the various caves and passages of the crypt. 

Outside of the church a gang of mother-of-pearl 
vendors and other folk who desired to beg or to sell 
something, threw themselves upon us furiously, clamour- 
ing, beseeching, and pestering, till we were driven almost 
mad with their importunities. This is one of the most 
persistent troubles that the traveller must expect in the 
Holy Land. He visits some sacred spot which he has 
longed to see from childhood, and no sooner is he without 
its doors than a crowd of impudent scamps, to whom the 
traditions of that place are a daily revenue, fall upon him 
and disturb his mind and temper. 

However, we got rid of all of them at last — except 
one little girl, who simply declined to be driven away — 
and walked to a high crest on the outskirts of the town, 
whence we saw the wide plain that runs to the Dead Sea, 
and is bounded by the mountains of Moab. Below us, 
enclosed by a wall, lay that olive garden where the angel 
is said to have visited the " shepherds abidi ng in the field_ 



BETHLEHEM 



287 



keeping watch over their flock by night," and to have 
given them the " good tidings of great joy which shall be 
to all people," while above the Heavenly multitude gave 
" glory to God in the highest and on earth peace." 

Thence breaking through the ranks of the mother-of- 
pearl sellers, who now made their last desperate attack, 
we drove to David's Well. It was from this well, when 
the Philistines held his city of Bethlehem, that David 
longed for water. " Oh ! that one would give me drink 
of the water of Bethlehem which is by the gate." Then 
the three mighty men found a path through the hosts of 
the Philistines and drew water from the well and brought 
it to their prince. But David " poured it out unto the 
Lord," saying, " Shall I drink the blood of the men that 
went in jeopardy of their lives ? " 

I suppose that the well shown by the gate is the same, 
but, if so, I do not think, however thirsty he might be, 
that David would wish to drink of its water to-day, since 
all the surface drainage of the garden finds its way into 
it ; as by kneeling and looking down the well I was able 
to discover. When questioned the priest in charge could 
give no explanation. He only said that it had always 
been so. 

Leaving this mystery unsolved, we drove back to 
Jerusalem. On our way we passed the field that was 
bought to bury strangers in with the price of the thirty 
pieces of betrayal, and that grim and desolate valley— 
once the scene of the abomination of heathen worship — 
which during the last 1500 years has received the bones 
of so many of those travellers to whom Jerusalem has 
proved the place of their last pilgrimage. 



CHAPTER XX 



JERICHO, THE DEAD SEA, BETHANY, AND SOLOMON'S 
QUARRIES 

The weather was still very cold and rainy on the 
morning that we started from Jerusalem to visit Jordan, 
J ericho, and the Dead Sea. Leaving at about eight o'clock, 
we crossed the head of the Valley of the Kedron and drove 
to the cave on the Mount of Olives, now an underground 
chapel, which is said to contain the tomb of the Virgin, 
the tomb of her parents, the tomb of Joseph, and the 
grotto where the last scene of the Agony is reported to 
have fallen upon our Lord while His disciples slept around. 
These different sacred spots are in the possession of the 
Greeks, the Armenians, and the Abyssinians, each of 
those sects having an altar here. Also there is a place 
of prayer reserved to the Mahommedans. It is needless 
to add that here, as elsewhere, the various Foundations 
indulge in their scandalous and discreditable rivalry. 
The church lies maoy feet underground, and is approached 
by a broad flight of marble steps, so ill-lighted that the 
visitor will do well if he proceeds like a blind man, 
tapping in front of him with a stick. 

On this morning the crowd and the confusion were 
great, for up and down the steps poured two conflicting 
streams of hundreds of Russian pilgrims, perspiring and 
malodorous, amongst whom we struggled in the gloom. At 
their foot a somewhat mercenary monk provided us with 
tapers, by the light of which we inspected the tomb of the 
Virgin. It is covered with a marble slab, worn perfectly 
smooth by the lips of pilgrims. These good people, and 



JERICHO 



289 



especially the Russians, think it their duty to kiss 
every object of acknowledged or reputed sanctity. I 
have seen them kneeling on the road kissing the 
ground, standing against walls kissing the stones, and 
bowing themselves to kiss the thresholds or the doors of 
buildings. 

Owing to the multitude which surged to and fro, the 
sound of the singing of the mass (I think, at two altars), 
the smoke of the burning tapers, and the thick atmos- 
phere arising from the presence in that airless place of 
so many pious but unwashen persons, our visit was dis- 
turbed and unsatisfactory. Indeed I was glad when we 
had struggled up the steps again and found ourselves in 
the cold, refreshing air. 

Next we walked to the Garden of Gethsemane, a spot 
the identity of which seems never to have been doubted. 
It is the property of the Franciscans, and enclosed by a 
wall rendered as hideous as may be with stucco and bad 
pictures, although, fortunately, the existence of the olives 
has made it impossible for any one to cover it with a roof. 
Within the wall is a garden, and within that garden the 
true wonder of the place — eight olive trunks, still 
living but of a vast antiquity, here and there built up 
with stones to support them. So ancient are these 
decaying trees that, taking into consideration the lon- 
gevity of the olive, it seems to me possible, and even 
probable, that amongst them, or others which sprang 
from the same roots, the Saviour did indeed pray and 
suffer. Yet they still push their leaves in spring and 
bear their fruit in autumn. 

Preceding and following us round the enclosure were 
many more Russian pilgrims. I observed them closely, 
and noted that none of them seemed to look at or pay 
attention to the sacred spot of ground, or to the gaunt 
and hollow olives that grow within. At intervals on the 
wall, however, are placed vile representations in plaster 
relief of various scenes connected with the Passion. 

T 



290 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



These are covered with iron gratings, and the pilgrims 
as they went stopped before each grating and kissed its 
bars. It is impossible to watch these people without 
sympathy and respect ; still it does appear almost piteous 
that they should pay so much attention to the outward 
and visible side of things, since this cannot but militate 
against a true appreciation of the inward and spiritual. 
Yet their motive is pure and good, and for the rest, who 
has a right to judge ? 

Shortly after leaving the Garden of Gethsemane we 
found our mounted Bedouin escort waiting for us by the 
roadside. Nothing that I saw in the demeanour of any 
of the inhabitants of the Dead Sea region, leads me to 
suppose that the presence of guards was a necessity. But 
there they are, and no traveller seems to be allowed to 
go to Jericho without them. Possibly this is to be ex- 
plained by the fact that they are well paid for their 
services, and, in addition, receive a baksheesh from the 
object of their protective attentions. Possibly also, if 
they were no longer employed, as they themselves 
vigorously assert would be the case, accidents might 
overtake the pilgrim. Without being uncharitable, I 
can conceive even that they, or some of them, might 
be intimately concerned in those accidents. If a re- 
spectable Bedouin guard has his means of livelihood 
taken away from him, who could wonder if he should 
again relapse into the unregenerate state of a disreputable 
Bedouin thief? 

A little further on, situated upon a hillside to our 
right, in the midst of several caverns that have, I 
suppose, served as tombs, we saw the slaughterhouse 
of Jerusalem, with the butchers at their horrid work 
in the full sight of passers-by, and the flocks of sheep 
and other animals waiting their turn. It was a most 
unpleasant spectacle. 

Next we passed through Bethany, without stopping, 
as we were to visit it on our return, and at length 



JERICHO 



291 



came to the spot which is fabled to be the scene 
spoken of by our Lord in the parable of the Good 
Samaritan and the traveller who went down to Jericho 
and fell among thieves. Here we rested the horses 
awhile, as the road, which, for a wonder, had not been 
made for the German Emperor, was steep and slippery 
after the rain, although it is the best in Palestine, and, 
indeed, by no means bad, considering the engineering 
difficulties that must have been overcome in its con- 
struction. 

After leaving this Khan Hadrur the landscape as 
we drove became even more lonesome and extraor- 
dinarily wild. It is impossible to describe it better 
than by saying that it reminded me of the mountains 
of the moon as seen through a telescope. White, arid, 
unpeopled, with towering cliffs and vast rain- cut gullies, 
covered with round and stunted bushes showing like 
green warts on the face of the hills, uncultivated and 
uncultivable, the home of hawks and ravens, and here 
and there of a few wandering goats, that make little 
beaten tracks upon the mountain sides, it is the very 
ideal of desolation, a wilderness of wildernesses. At 
the bottom of a precipitous, yawning gulf runs the 
brook Cherith. Here, built half-way up the towering 
cliff, to which it clings like a swallow's nest upon a 
wall, is a Greek monastery that, as I am informed, 
marks the site of the cave in which Elijah was fed 
by the ravens. Of this monastery David, our drago- 
man, told me a curious tale. He said that once when 
he visited the place an old monk there took him out 
to the mountain-side, carrying in his hand a basket 
of crumbs and other food. Here, leaving David at 
a little distance, he stood still and whistled, whereon 
all sorts of birds, wild doves and many others, emerged 
from the cliffs and brushwood, and, after fluttering 
round, settled on the old man's head and shoulders 
while he fed them from his hand. Surely upon this 



292 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



monk must have fallen the mantle of sweet St. Francis 
of Assisi. 

Now we began to descend precipitous slopes till the 
plain of Jericho lay before us, a great expanse sprinkled 
with thorn - scrub and backed by the mountains of 
Moab. Unfortunately for the most part it was draped 
in mist and clouds, which hid the Dead Sea and 
blurred the outline of the hills. Passing through 
Jericho, a horribly foul village, where the population 
are said to be all thieves and most of the children 
seemed diseased, we drove on to the mounds which 
are reported to mark the site of the ancient city, 
whose walls fell down at the sound of the trumpet. 
As these mounds are distinct and isolated, however, 
it seems quite possible that they cover the ruins of 
outlying towers and fortifications. 

Then we visited a fine pool of fresh water, which 
we were informed is fed by the spring that from 
bitter was made sweet by the prophet Elisha. After 
this we drove back to the village and our hotel through 
flat level land, which evidently is very fertile wherever 
it is reached and irrigated by the waters of Elisha's 
pool. 

We had left Jerusalem in bitter cold, but here, 
although it was still early in the season, the air was 
hot and sultry, hotter even than at Tiberias. It is 
easy to imagine that after their long wanderings 
amongst sand and rocky deserts, this valley of Jordan, 
probably then in a high state of cultivation, with 
the greater part of its rich soil irrigated from the 
river and other sources by the industrious heathen 
husbandmen, would have appeared to the Jews as a 
veritable Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. 
Personally, however, it is not a climate in which 
I should care to live; indeed, what between heat 
and mosquitoes, most Europeans find it impossible in 
summer. 



View on the Road to Jericho 




The only House by the Dead Sea 



THE DEAD SEA 



293 



The road, or rather track, from Jericho to the 
Dead Sea is bad in spots, especially at certain steep 
bits where it crosses streams, or nullahs. It is, however, 
wonderful what obstacles a Jerusalem rattle-trap will 
negotiate in safety. No English driver would dream 
of taking his carriage down such places. The trail runs 
across an arid plain impregnated with salt and bearing 
a scanty vegetation. Here and there among the bushes 
bloom ranunculi, while little iris of a peculiarly deep 
and lovely hue are common. Also many great, eagle- 
like birds — I imagine they are a kind of kite, though 
what they all find to live on I cannot quite understand 
— flit solemnly from thorn to thorn, while porcupines 
burrow in the sand. 

Every one, at Sunday-school or elsewhere, has learnt 
what there is to learn about the Dead Sea. They know 
how it receives between six and seven million tons of 
water daily and evaporates as much or more; how it 
has no outlet, is over 1000 feet deep, and nearly 3000 
feet below the level of the Mediterranean; how its 
waters are so salt that it is difficult to sink in them, 
and contain nothing that has life, except the bacillus 
of tetanus, a germ not easily defeated. All have heard 
also how it is full of asphalt such as is supposed to 
cover the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how 
people who bathe in it must rush to the Jordan for 
a fresh- water dip lest their clothes should stick to their 
skins. I will, therefore, pass over these with other 
details, and attempt only to describe the Dead Sea, as 
I saw that wonderful lake. 

Leaving my companions, I walked away alone past 
the only house upon these shores, a naked framework 
of poles that once had been covered with rushes to give 
shelter in bad weather to travellers from Jericho. This 
habitation and its surroundings seem singularly appro- 
priate to each other. At a distance I stopped and sat 
down to look. Before me stretched miles and miles 



m A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of sea, one great sheet of smooth grey water, breaking 
into little oily waves beneath the wind. On its margin, 
like a fringe of skeletons, lay a long unvarying line of 
dead, white trees, some with the broken boughs still 
on them, and fantastic, projecting roots mingled with 
masses of peeled brushwood, all of it debris brought 
down by Jordan in times of flood. On either side 
were spread the misty mountains; to the right Ras-el- 
Feshkha and Ras Mersed, ending in the wilderness of 
Engedi ; to the left the ravines of Zerka Ma in. There 
they towered, distorted, barren, desolate, finishing leagues 
away, far off, and faintly seen in two giant, embracing 
arms. 

I rose and looked back. Behind me stretched the 
wide, arid plain, clothed with a scant and thorny vegeta- 
tion, dying and ash-coloured, but tipped here and there 
with an unwholesome arsenic green. Bordering it were 
fortress-like sandy mounts, fashioned and denuded by 
aeons of sun and storm. Beyond those again a vast 
parapet of tortured hills that might have been scooped 
and pointed as they came white-hot from the womb of 
the world, where the furnace-blasts are hurricanes, to 
be thrown hissing into a bath of ice, and fixed to eternal 
stone. Then, yet further off for the last black background, 
a hanging veil of storm. 

I turned again and looked up. A distant gull 
travelled across the foodless water where he might not 
stay, and a wild duck passed like an arrow towards 
Jordan. There was no other life. Above me spread 
a dull sky, broken by mountains of massed clouds, and 
between them little valley-rifts of blue through which 
the sun shone rarely. Then rain-bearing mist blotted 
the peaks of Moab, and hid from my sight Nebo, whence 
Moses once beheld this very scene. 

The Jordan, or those pools of it which we visited, 
lies three or four miles from the banks of the Dead Sea. 
The track thither meanders over flats of half-dried mire 



THE DEAD SEA 295 

through which the horses struggle as best they may, 
their drivers carrying with them logs of wood that 
they pick up upon the shores of the sea, to set beneath 
the wheels in the worst of the mud-holes. 

At this season of the year, and in contrast to the 
desert round about, the banks of swift and muddy 
Jordan are lovely and refreshing to the eye, with their 
dense growth of willows, poplars, and tarfa trees clad 
in the vivid green of new-come foliage. Reed birds 
were to be seen also, and flashing past us one of those 
lovely halcyons that I noted on the Sea of Galilee. 

We were told that a baptism was about to be cele- 
brated in the waters of Jordan, the candidate being an 
American lady already past middle age. I doubted the 
story, but sure enough from the boat which I had hired in 
order to row up the stream we saw the party, consisting 
of a Greek priest in his tall hat, a native woman with a 
bath towel, or some garment that resembled it, and the 
candidate, all looking perplexedly at each other upon 
the reedy brink of Jordan. We then learned that the 
baptism was to be by immersion, so I thought it time to 
direct the boatman to move on. 

We finished our row, and returned, but things did 
not seem to be much advanced. There was the per- 
plexed-looking priest, there the woman with the mysterious 
garment, and there the candidate sitting disconsolate 
on the ground in a kind of a reedy bower. We landed, 
and were informed that the ceremony was to be delayed 
till after our departure, whereupon, of course, we hurried 
away. 

Next morning we heard the conclusion of the matter 
from David, who had it from a brother dragoman who 
remained. It appears that the candidate wished to be 
baptized by total immersion. The Greek priest who had 
been retained for the occasion declined this method, 
saying that he did not immerse, and knew nothing 
about that ceremony. He offered, however, to baptize in 



296 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the ordinary fashion by the sign of the cross, but, 
so simple a rite being rejected as unsatisfactory, things 
came to a deadlock, which explained the perplexed air 
of all concerned when we left them. After our depart- 
ure further argument ensued, but neither party could be 
moved. 

Then it was when everything seemed hopeless that 
there happened what in past days would doubtless have 
been set down to miracle. Suddenly out of the reed and 
willow swamps of Jordan issued a Baptist minister, who, 
so we were informed, without warning of the proposed 
rite or acquaintance with the candidate, chanced to be on 
the spot, and, with a fine professional instinct, had hidden 
himself up to await developments. At the psychological 
moment he emerged and offered his services. The Greek 
priest was paid off and departed, the providential minister 
(all according to David) robed himself in the mat from 
the bottom of a carriage, and entered the river, where 
the lady joined him suitably arrayed, and, clinging to the 
side of the boat, for the current is swift and the water 
deep, everything was accomplished decently and in order. 

I confess that to me this incident is full of mystery. 
First, how could it happen that a Christian lady of that 
age should not be already baptized ? Can a person be 
baptized again whenever the spirit moves him ? Further, 
is it permissible to an individual, presumably of the 
Baptist persuasion, to undergo this solemn rite as an 
incident in a tour to J ordan, and at the hands of a Greek 
priest as this lady had proposed to do ? Lastly, there is 
the question of the substitute whom I saw, and — so 
deficient after much experience remains my judgment of 
men — did not recognise as a clergyman of any faith. 
Doubtless I was mistaken and he is a minister, possibly of 
high degree. Still, were I about to be baptized, I should 
like to make a few inquiries before I accepted that 
solemn office at the hands of a stranger appearing oppor- 
tunely out of the reeds of Jordan. It is hardly necessary 



THE DEAD SEA 



297 



for me to add that I do not tell this story with the idea 
of jesting at the person concerned, who has a right like 
the rest of us to carry out her religious aspirations 
in such fashion as seems best to her, but rather as a 
curious example of enthusiasm triumphant in spite of 
obstacles. 

Brother Felix has much to say about the Jordan, 
and, amongst other things, deals with this matter of 
baptism as it appeared to him over four hundred years 
ago. It seems that then a superstition existed, and 
for aught I know exists to this day, that those who are 
baptized in Jordan " will never thereafter grow old ; and 
this is why they make such efforts to get to the Jordan 
and baptize one another." He instances the case of some 
ladies of his own party "who bathed among the reeds 
above us with modesty, silence, and devotion, and far 
more sedately than we. I could have wished," he adds, 
" in the case of these old women, that the common report 
might prove true; for the people say that whosoever 
bathes in Jordan does not grow any older, but that the 
longer he remains in the water, the younger he grows ; 
for instance, if he bathes for one hour, he grows younger 
by one hour; if for two, he grows younger by two; if 
three, by three ; if for a year, he grows younger by a 
year. But our women comrades would have needed a 
bath of sixty years to restore their youth ; for they were 
women of eighty years and upwards." 

It is something of a shock to the reader to find that 
Brother Felix had any eyes to see how old or young were 
the ladies in whose company he travelled, and should 
even allow himself to express a preference for the latter 
state in woman. But Felix was very much of a man 
after all, although, as I judge, an exceedingly good one 
according to his lights. 

He tells also some curious stories about the sudden 
terror which, it appears, frequently overtook pilgrims who 
had swum across Jordan, when it became necessary for 



298 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



them to return. The task, I may observe, does not look 
difficult, and, if I had been acquainted with the pages of 
Felix before visiting the place, I should have liked to make 
trial of it notwithstanding the current. He mentions one 
of his companions, however, a strong swimmer, who was 
very nearly drowned here, and who alleged afterwards 
that when he was come to the middle of Jordan something 
beneath the water touched him, and " I was so much 
frightened by its touch that I lost all the strength of my 
limbs, and could not help myself either with my legs or my 
arms." Two of the company made a second attempt, 
supporting this man between them, whereon at the same 
place he began to sink, dragged them down with him, and 
was with difficulty rescued. Ultimately a Saracen, mounted 
on a strong horse, crossed Jordan at a ford a long way off 
and brought him back safe thereby. The pilgrim, we are 
informed, " gave him much gold for the price of his life." 
The adventure wrought a sad change in the poor man, how- 
ever, since he who was handsome, " lusty, overbearing, 
and quarrelsome, and disliked by many of his fellows," 
became, after his return from Jordan, " pale-faced, timo- 
rous, humble, and slavish." Felix adds that he remained 
sorrowful and cast down, and, as he believed, died before 
long. He says also that he himself, when swimming in 
Jordan, was smitten with fear, but got back safely, and 
that a great friend of his suddenly lost all his strength 
in the middle of the river and was barely saved 
alive. 

Afterwards he discusses the cause of this phenomenon, 
which he declares was the common experience of all pil- 
grims, whether it was brought about by " certain unnatural 
and hellish beasts who swim up from the Dead Sea to 
bring men to their deaths," or by strong imagination. 
Finally, he seems to favour a third interpretation — that it 
is a punishment from Heaven, " because swimming across is 
a sign of wantonness and dissoluteness," and the Jordan is 
a place " for weeping, not for laughing ; for prayer, not for 



THE DEAD SEA 



299 



shouting ; for kneeling, not for struggling ; for repentance, 
not for wantonness." 

To this day, so far as my observation goes, such must, 
properly no doubt, be the general thought with reference 
to the Holy Land. As a result, there the traveller sees 
little that is bright or joyous. I hardly remember noting 
a young and charming face, or even a pretty dress. Youth 
flees that land; it shrinks from wandering where are no 
daily common pleasures, nothing but solemn sights and 
painful memories, which call up meditations oppressive to 
the spring of life. Palestine above all other countries 
seems the place of pilgrimage of folk on the wrong side 
of middle age, whose interests and ambitions have ceased 
to be solely, or even in the main, occupied with the anti- 
cipation of what good fortunes may befall them during 
the unspent days of their earthly sojourning. 

Be this as it may, the only sweet and cheerful things 
in the Holy Land, where even the native children for 
the most part appear so grave, are the lovely flowers 
which for a time smile upon its face, soon to be burnt 
up and vanish. Amid those sterile hills and rotting 
ruins these lilies of the field suggest to the mind the 
presence of a spirit of promise eternally renewed although 
fulfilment may be far, and of a hope that never dies, though 
it may wither almost to its root in the searing winds of 
doubt and the long, undewed season of the heart's thirst 
and trial. 

Felix mentions another superstition of which it would 
be interesting to learn whether any traces remain to this 
day. Myself I have heard of none, although now, as of 
old, pilgrims bring jars to the Jordan and fill them with 
its water. It is that ships on board of which such water 
was carried were always unlucky. He tells from his own 
experience that whenever they were in any danger at sea, 
the pilots ran about the vessel searching all the belongings 
of the pilgrims for this water, threatening to throw over- 
board those who carried it with their baggage. He says, 



300 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



too, that he had endured much through being thus 
"insolently" searched, and adds that a papal bull 
was to be seen at Rome forbidding the importation of 
Jordan water " on pain of the curse of the Pope." 
This malediction Felix supposes to have been issued 
in order to put a stop to superstitions connected with 
the use of Jordan water for baptismal purposes. But 
were mediaeval popes wont thus to war against such 
superstitions ? 

In the immediate neighbourhood of the Dead Sea 
the mosquitoes were very troublesome; indeed, it was 
necessary to smoke with vigour, and keep a handkerchief 
moving about the head as a protection against their 
venomous attacks. They did not, however, attack us by 
night in Jericho, although, I believe, that here also, a 
little later in the year, they are a perfect scourge. 

The morning that we left the valley of Jordan 
proved very hot. Unfortunately, also, the view from the 
heights above, as on the day of our arrival, was obscured 
by dense streaming mists that lay like a white veil 
upon the low lands and the opposing border line of moun- 
tains, although the point of the precipitous Quarantana 
soared above them. This hill, which I did not climb, 
is said, upon no ground that I can discover, to have 
been the scene of the Temptation, and because of the 
sanctity attaching to it on this account, was for many 
generations inhabited by anchorites like those of Tabor 
who lived there in huts and caves. 

At a place called the Apostle's Well we left our con- 
veyance and walked by a steep mountain track to the 
village of Bethany. This path, I believe, follows the 
line of the old road, that which the Saviour must have 
travelled when He went down to Jordan to be baptized. 
Reaching Bethany we were shown the tomb of Lazarus, 
which is said to be the only cave in the place, that, 
notwithstanding its pretty site overlooking a little valley, 
and the fertility of its soil, seems to-day a very un- 



SOLOMON'S QUARRIES 301 

populated village. At the least a great number of the 
houses are unroofed and ruined. 

Entering by a low rock-cut door, we lit tapers and 
descended about twenty worn and broken steps which 
brought us to a kind of ante-chamber or chapel. Hence 
about five more steps, which appear at some time to have 
been covered in with a slab, brought us to the tomb itself. 
Supposing this to be the true site, whereof there is no 
proof, it would have been easy for the Saviour to stand in 
the ante-chamber, and after the stone had been moved, to 
call the words : " Lazarus, come forth ! " down the remain- 
ing steps by which it is separated from the grave. But as 
to the exact locality none can speak with sureness, although 
it cannot have been far away. 

We visited also the ruins of the house of Mary and 
Martha. From the remnants of carved marbles and the 
fine quality of the stone used in its walls, I imagine that 
this dwelling must have belonged to some one of wealth 
and importance. Whether Martha or Mary ever crossed 
its threshold is a different matter ; probably it was built 
in an after generation. 

Between Bethany and Jerusalem once more we passed 
the slaughter-place. At this hour of the day there were no 
butchers and no victims, but the aspect of the spot was 
horrible. Bloated-looking pariah dogs slunk away from it 
to sleep in the shade, while on the dying olive-trees about 
sat scores of full-gorged kites. "Where the carcase is there 
shall the eagles be gathered together." As I gazed it was 
borne in upon my mind that thus must the courts of the 
Temple have appeared upon the morrow of the Roman 
massacre. 

One of the most interesting of the many sights we saw 
after our return to Jerusalem was that of the ancient 
quarries, called of Solomon, whence he is said to have 
drawn the stone for the building of the Temple. I can 
well believe that this was so, and as the blocks were pre- 
pared in the bowels of the earth thus it came about that 



302 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



no sound of saw or hammer could be heard above. Pro- 
bably Herod and others after his day made use of them 
also, drawing the hewn stone up into the Temple area, 
since, although the present entry to the caves is not far 
from the Damascus gate, they are reported to extend to 
beneath the Harem enclosure. 

Few travellers, or comparatively few, visit that gloomy 
place. Perhaps it was on this account, and because he was 
determined not to miss one of the rare chances which came 
his way, that the Turk in charge of the quarries, hearing 
that we desired to see them, did not wait for us to arrive, 
but appeared at the hotel to fetch us. He was a very 
strange-looking person, who gave us the idea of having 
lived for years underground, although, of course, the con- 
nection between his appearance and his office may have 
been accidental. Tall, thin, bandy-legged, and cadaverous, 
he was clothed in a rusty European overcoat and a bright 
red fez, above which, although it did not rain and there 
was little sun, he held up an enormous white umbrella. 
With his back bent and his head thrust forward beneath 
the umbrella, notwithstanding his limp and crooked legs, 
our guide threaded the crowded bazaars at a pace which 
I found it difficult to equal. But as the white umbrella 
always floated ahead, like the famed helmet of Navarre, 
there was no fear of losing him ; indeed, not having been 
paid in advance certainly he would have guarded against 
any such catastrophe. 

Opening a rickety door in the face of the rocky slope, 
old Troglodytes, to whom now added themselves certain 
myrmidons, produced long tapers which we lit. Then off 
he went again down the steep stones with the activity of a 
great black beetle, and after him we followed, till at length 
the doorway behind us became but a star of light that 
soon vanished altogether. 

It was a strange and awesome place in which we found 
ourselves, a vast, many-branching cavern, filled with dark- 
ness and with silence, whereof the ends and recesses have 



SOLOMON'S QUARRIES 303 



never been explored. The air clung thick and heavy, the 
heat was such as in the tropics precedes a hurricane ; the 
only sounds came from the occasional dripping of water 
condensed upon the ragged roof and the echo of our 
footsteps, while in that breathless calm the tapers burnt 
steadily as stars. All about lay tumbled heaps of rock 
loosened centuries ago. Also there were many half-cut 
squares and rough hewn masses, embryo pillars perhaps 
never moved from the spot where they had fallen. The 
extent of these caves, now so fearfully still, but that must 
once have resounded with the voices and hammers of 
thousands of workmen, seems to be enormous, and their 
ramifications are endless. How our friend Troglodytes 
found his way about them was to me a marvel ; certainly 
I should have been hopelessly lost within five minutes. 
But he scrambled on, waving the white umbrella, a tiny 
figure in that dwarfing vastness, and we scrambled after 
over thousands of tons of debris. Above us as we went 
hung threatening blocks of stone that seemed to be sus- 
pended from the roof, for wherever it was possible the 
ancient workmen detached them in such fashion that 
they fell down from above. 

At length, having gone as far as was safe and the air 
could be breathed with any comfort, we turned, although 
at the time I was not aware of the fact, and ten minutes 
later once more saw the star of light shining at the 
door. In fact, I was quite glad to reach it, being hot and 
tired, soaked, too, with perspiration induced by the stifling 
closeness of the place. Moreover, the candles softened 
with the heat, and bent over the hand in a way that 
made them very difficult and uncomfortable to hold. 

I should like to know all the history of those vaults. 
What tragedies may they not have witnessed during the 
many terrible sieges and sacks through which Jerusalem 
has passed ! Often fugitives must have refuged here ; 
often doubtless they perished here. Perhaps they were 
starved ; perhaps these rugged walls have echoed to the 



304 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



cries of massacre, and this darkness has been illumined 
with the red torches of Romans, or of Saracens, seeking 
their helpless prey even in the bowels of the earth. 
Perhaps, also — let us hope it — some more fortunate hid 
here until the danger was done with, and thence escaped 
to light and life again. 



CHAPTEE XXI 



GOKDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 

Another place in Jerusalem, of which, so far as I am 
aware, the guide-books take no notice, but that to me 
was fascinating and suggestive, is the sepulchre known as 
Gordon's Tomb, with the garden whereby it is surrounded. 
This name has been given to the spot because that great 
and single-minded man General Gordon, when he was in 
Jerusalem, made it his custom to come here for prayer and 
meditation. As for the tomb I do not understand that he 
ever asserted it to be that in which the body of our Lord 
was laid, although he was inclined to believe this might 
be so. My information on the point, however, is of a 
hearsay order, gathered only from what was told me in 
Jerusalem. 

This, at least, is sure, that if the true Calvary was where 
many believe it to have been, among them myself, on the 
traditional site of the Place of Stoning, of which I shall 
speak presently, few resting-places could have been more 
convenient for the entombment of the divine Body. Also 
the resemblance between this garden with its grave and 
those described in the Gospels is remarkable. It may 
be, however, that the facts that the place is still a garden, 
and that the tomb is much what it must have been when 
it was hollowed out so many, many centuries ago, give more 
weight to this similarity than the circumstances warrant. 

Yet it would not be too much to say that here the 
scriptural description seems entirely fulfilled. The tomb 
is rock-hewn. It appears never to have been finished, for 
some of the surfaces have not been smoothed. It was 



306 A WINTEK PILGKIMAGE 



closed with a stone. When this stone was rolled away the 
disciples, Peter and John, by stooping down could have 
looked into the sepulchre and seen the linen clothes lie, 
perhaps upon the floor of the little ante- chamber. This 
tomb, too, was a family tomb, such as Joseph of Arimathea 
might well have made, with room in it for three bodies, 
one at the end as it were, and recessed, and two at right 
angles. Very well might these have served as seats, such 
as those on which Mary must have seen " two angels in 
white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the 
feet, where the body of Jesus had lain." 
- Who can tell whether or no it is the very spot ? But, 
if the true Calvary was just without the wall on the 
borders of the Mahommedan cemetery, as think Otto 
Thenius, General Gordon, Colonel Conder, Doctor Merrill, 
and many more, that spot cannot have been very far away. 
At least, the sight of it is a great support to the imagina- 
tion. Such a garden there must have been, and such a 
tomb, even as we see them to-day. In such a place, 
through the darkness before the daylight, must have 
shone the countenance that was " like lightning " and the 
raiment that was " white as snow," for fear of which " the 
keepers did shake and become as dead men." Through 
just such a garden, dim and dewy, must the two Marys 
have crept in terror of the Jews, or perhaps of the Eoman 
guard, coming to the mouth of the sepulchre as the first 
golden rays of morning pierced it with their level shafts. 
On such a little terrace as that above, after, in answer to 
the query of the Messengers, she had uttered the immortal 
words echoed since her day by so many millions of doubt- 
ing hearts, that she wept, " because they have taken away 
my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him," the 
Magdalene might have turned to behold Him whom in the 
shadow she supposed to be the gardener. Up such steps 
she may have hurried at His summons, to be met by the 
solemn and mysterious rebuke, " Touch Me not ; for I am 
not yet ascended to My Father." 



GORDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 307 



Who can say; but standing in that quiet garden 
with the rock-hewn sepulchre before me, it was easy to 
imagine that here and not elsewhere these dread mysteries 
were enacted. Also others have believed it in a past 
already distant. Over the centre niche, where would have 
lain the body of the Lord, some dead hand who lived in the 
crusading time, so said the custodian, has drawn a cross in 
red pigment, and on either side of it painted the Greek 
letters Alpha and Omega. This he would only have done, 
believing that here was the veritable tomb of Jesus. Of 
course, however, this circumstance proves nothing, and, al- 
though that cross is old, it may be later than the Crusaders. 

I noted another curious and suggestive thing about this 
tomb. In the rock without, hollowed from its side, the 
Saracens or others cut mangers for the feeding of animals, 
some of which remain to this day. How strange if the 
manger which was connected with the place of the earthly 
birth of our Lord, should also thus have become connected 
with the place of His earthly burial. How strange, also, if 
here, neglected in this old garden, un visited by the mass 
of pilgrims, undecked by any pompous shrine or monu- 
ment, should be the true scene of the Resurrection, and 
not yonder beneath the dome on the gorgeous battle- 
ground of the warring sects. 

From this garden, perhaps so holy, though probably the 
truth of that matter will never be known, we went outside 
the walls to the traditional Place of Stoning, which is on a 
knoll in a Mahommedan cemetery north of the Damascus 
gate, and almost above the old cave that is called the 
Grotto of Jeremiah. Here it is that St. Stephen is said to 
have been stoned, although of late the site of his martyrdom 
has been shifted. On the edge of the knoll rises a sheer 
cliff forty or fifty feet in depth. I am told, although I 
have been unable to trace the genesis of the statement, 
that it was the habit of the Jews to throw condemned 
persons off the brink of this cliff, and then if any life was 
left in them to batter it out with stones. Here as it 



308 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



chanced I myself was stoned, for in my hurry to look over 
the edge of the cliff, to me interesting for other reasons, 
inadvertently I stepped upon the pillar of an old Mahom- 
medan tomb. Thereon a Moslem lady, one of a group 
who were seated in the sun basking and gossiping among 
the graves, hurled a lump of rock at me with considerable 
accuracy and force, helping it upon its flight with a 
volley of abuse. Instantly children appeared who also 
began to throw stones at the Christian " dogs " ; but as 
we showed no concern, in time they ceased from their 
amusement. 

Things in this respect seem to have changed little 
during five centuries. Felix Fabri cautions pilgrims to 
" beware of stepping over the sepulchres of the Saracens, 
because they are greatly vexed when they see this done, 
and pelt with stones any one who steps over them, because 
they believe that our passing over them torments and dis- 
turbs the dead." 

The reason why I was so anxious to examine this place is 
that I believe it to be the actual site of the Crucifixion, and 
that here above the Damascus road, whence the passers-by 
looked up and mocked at the dying figure strained upon 
His cross, once the body of the Saviour hung through 
those hours of sun and darkness. What is more likely 
than that the Place of Stoning should also be the Place of 
Crucifixion, and what spot could be more suitable than 
this summit of a cliff, where all might see the sufferers of 
the death of shame ? 

It was outside of the city walls, yet near to the city. 
A man might bear his own cross there, since it seems no 
further from the Place of Judgment than is the Church of 
the Sepulchre. There is another point, to my mind one 
most suggestive. The Crucifixion ground, called Golgotha 
in the Hebrew and Calvaria in the Latin, whence comes 
our own Calvary, means in either language the Place 
of the Skull. All the evangelists give it this name. St. 
Matthew says, " a place called Golgotha, that is to say, 



The Place of Stoning 



GORDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 309 



the place of the skull." St. Mark says, " the place called 
Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, the place of the 
skull." St. Luke says, " the place which is called Calvary," 
in the Revised Version rendered "the place which is 
called the skull." St. John says, " a place called the 
place of the skull, which is called in the Hebrew 
Golgotha." 

From such various testimony it may fairly be con- 
cluded that this execution-ground had something to do 
with a skull. It has been suggested that it was so called 
because skulls were left there, but then would it not 
have been called the Place of Skulls? Also is it not 
admitted that it was the Jewish habit to bury the bodies 
of malefactors, and not to leave them to rot upon the 
ground, as is the common custom of savages ? If so, 
the skulls would not have remained in sight. Another 
suggestion is that the shape of the mound may have 
resembled that of a skull. But nowhere in the Bible is 
it stated that the Crucifixion took place upon a mount, 
although the idea that this was so has become general. 
All that is stated, all which is quite certain, is that it 
happened outside the walls of the city. Thus, to put 
aside other evidence, it is expressly said in the eleventh 
verse of the last chapter of St. Matthew that " some of 
the watch came into the city, and showed unto the chief 
priests all the things that were done." 

Now, as it chances, on the cliff at this spot, believed 
to be the Place of Stoning, and by many that of the 
Crucifixion, the face of the rock, looking towards Jeru- 
salem, has undoubtedly a fantastic, but, to my fancy, a 
very real resemblance to a rotting human skull. There is 
the low corroded forehead ; there are two deep hollows that 
make the eyes; there is something which might be the 
remnant of a nose, and beneath, near to the ground level, 
a suggestion of twisted and decaying lips. I saw the 
likeness at once, but on the other hand my nephew who 
was with me could see nothing. In the same way three 



310 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 

people out of every four catch the resemblance in a 
photograph of the place which I brought home, whereas 
to the fourth on an average it is invisible. If two 
thousand years ago the face of that cliff was approxi- 
mately as it appears to-day, may not some fanciful- 
minded Jew have caught this likeness and designated 
it on that account " The Place of the Skull " ? If so, 
in view of its traditions and horrible use, the name 
would have been likely to cling to the site from age 
to age. 

But was it the same ? Have weather or the hand of 
man altered the appearance of the cliff? Who can say? 
For my part I believe that save in the case of strata of 
exceptional softness, a trifle of two thousand years will 
not make any great difference in the appearance of rock, 
especially in such a climate as that of this part of Pales- 
tine, where no severe frost comes to corrode and split the 

Lair-hardened stone. There remains the question of extra- 
natural interference. Men might have hollowed out those 
eye-holes. It is, however, difficult to see why they should 
have done so. The face is steep and not easy to come at. 
Enormous quarries exist within a few yards — those which 
I have already described — whence they could more easily 
have obtained building material. At least no extensive 
cuttings have been made, since the road seems to run where 
presumably it must always have run, between the cliff and 
the city wall. 

This is the case, put briefly, but as clearly as I can set it 
out. It is not for an amateur like myself upon the strength 
of only two examinations, although these were careful, to 
be dogmatic or express any positive opinion, and I express 
none on this or other disputed sites and matters connected 
with the Holy Land. How can I, who, lacking an extended 
experience of these problems, must rely mainly upon my 
powers of observation and deduction such as they may be, to 
guide me to the truth ? I only venture to point out, not 
knowing whether or no this has been done in works already 



GORDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 311 



published, that, as I saw it in the year 1900, the surface of 
this cliff has a quaint and ghastly resemblance to a human 
skull. Taken in connection with the traditions of that place, 
with its undoubted suitability to the dread purposes of 
public death, and with the name by which the true 
spot was known, wherever it may have been, I submit 
that this resemblance is, to say the least, exceedingly 
suggestive. 

If the inference is not a false one, if indeed the crosses 
of the Saviour and the thieves stood upon the summit of 
that little cliff, it would be a fact worthy of note that this 
patch of earth remains now just as it must have been 
in the long-dead Roman days. What a strange and bitter 
satire also would be involved in the circumstance that 
where the Christ gave up His soul is now a burying-place 
of the followers of the false prophet, in which the passing 
Christian of to-day is cursed and stoned. Here I leave 
the subject, adding only that on a subsequent study of this 
strange cliff from the roof of an opposing American school 
or mission within the walls, the skull-like likeness was, to 
my mind, even more apparent and striking than it had 
been when viewed from nearer points immediately beneath 
them. 

Unless it be that which is to be seen from the platform 
of the Russian tower upon the Mount of Olives, I know of 
no better view of Jerusalem than can be had by climbing 
to the roof of the New Hotel, upon some night when the 
full moon clothes that ancient Holy City and its surround- 
ing hills in a garment of shimmering silver. Studying it 
thence the traveller will understand how inconceivable 
it seems that the site of the present Church of the Sepul- 
chre, by tradition the place of the Crucifixion, Entomb- 
ment, and Resurrection, should ever have lain without 
the Roman walls. Even now the area enclosed within 
those of to-day is not much larger than that engirdled by 
the mediaeval fortifications of Famagusta, the provincial 
town in Cyprus which I have described in a previous 



312 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



chapter of this book. To cut away the portion which 
includes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would reduce 
this small space by about a fourth, or even more. Now, 
allowing that the old town extended somewhat towards 
the south, as the excavations of Dr. Bliss and others on 
the foundations of the wall seem to prove, surely it would 
be impossible, if shorn of this section, that it could have 
contained anything like the numbers of people who are 
said to have found shelter within its gates. Whether it 
could have held them at all, indeed, whatever the exact 
line of the walls, seems more than doubtful. Josephus 
tells us ("Wars," book vii. chap, xvii, edition of lf85) 
that " in the war of which we are speaking, no less than 
97,000 persons were made prisoners, and the number 
of those who lost their lives during its progress was 
1,100,000." 

In explanation of this vast total, he says that when 
Cestius caused a rough census of the Jews to be taken at 
the time of the Passover, it was reckoned that there were 
in Jerusalem " two million five hundred and fifty-six thou- 
sand persons, all of them in perfect health," which is a popu- 
lation nearly as great as that of Paris and its suburbs at the 
last census. No wonder he informs us that the multitude 
shut in by the siege was so immense " that the confined air 
occasioned a pestilence, and this calamity was soon followed 
by a famine." Yet he adds : " If the calculation of Cestius 
may be relied on, the city was quite large enough to 
have afforded accommodation to this amazing concourse of 
people." Was it ? According to Colonel Conder, a great 
authority, the number of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 
ordinary times cannot at this period of the siege have been 
more than 30,000 (it is now about 60,000, and very crowded). 
To add to this modest total over 2,000,000 souls, and to assert 
that such a seething mass of humanity, pent within those 
narrow walls, endured a siege of 143 days, is to strain 
the credulity of modern investigators to breaking point. 
Surely J osephus must have exaggerated. But if we divide 



GORDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 313 



his figures by five, supposing the ground on which is built 
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to have been without 
the wall in his day (as must have been the case if the Cruci- 
fixion took place there), it seems quite impossible that 
even the total thus diminished could have found room 
to, move and fight, or roofs to shelter them from sun and 
rain. 

This fact appears to me to constitute the best and most 
complete argument against the authenticity of the Church 
of the Sepulchre site, since all admit that the Crucifixion 
took place without and not within the city walls. The 
experts, however, can furnish other arguments. Thus, Dr. 
Merrill, who has studied the matter closely, and, I believe, 
himself carried out excavations, very kindly showed me the 
plan he had made of the foundations of the ancient walls, 
according to which the Holy Sepulchre site would be dis- 
tinctly included within them. I gathered from him also 
that he believes the Crucifixion to have taken place at the 
spot which I have described already, and I think that he 
has marked it thus upon his plan. In his opinion the 
Saviour carried His cross from the Hall of Judgment, not 
by the narrow and twisting Via Dolorosa, but along a 
broad military road that ran to the Damascus gate and 
thence to Csesarea. 

On the other hand, for some fifteen centuries the 
Church of the Sepulchre has been accepted as the true 
site. Therefore, the vested interests, if I may call them so, 
in that site are considerable, and any attempt to dispute 
it is vigorously cold-shouldered by Greeks, Latins, Arme- 
nians, and Abyssinians alike. But when this tradition is 
examined it will be found a house without foundations^ 
According to Eusebius, before the time of Constantine a 
temple of Venus, said to have been built by Hadrian, stood 
upon the site of the church. He appears to have thought 
also that the cave beneath was connected with the worship 
of this goddess. A vision induced the Empress Helena, 
the mother of Constantine, to undertake a pilgrimage to 



314 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



J erusalem. There another vision prompted her to destroy 
the temple of Venus and dig, whereon, " contrary to all 
expectation," the Tomb of the Lord was found beneath. 
Also she discovered the crosses upon which the Saviour 
and the good thief were executed, carefully buried away 
against the hour of her search. As no further vision came 
to explain which of these was the True Cross, this had to 
be determined by experiment. A lady sick to death was 
brought to the place, and when she was laid upon the 
genuine relic instantly recovered her health. Such, put 
concisely, seems to be the sum of the evidence in favour 
of the accepted site. The reader will judge of its value 
for himself. ^ 
If he is critically minded, however, it may occur to him 
as possible that when the Empress arrived and asked to be 
shown the notable places in Jerusalem, the Pagan inhabit- 
ants of that day took her to the ruined temple of Venus. 
Then might have come the visions already characteristic 
of this good woman, the purport of which would have 
been noised abroad. For the rest, is it wonderful that if a 
wealthy empress wishes and expects to find crosses by 
digging at a certain spot, crosses should, sure enough, be 
found ? 

Probably in Jerusalem then, as to-day, there existed 
enterprising people who appreciated money, and were not 
overburdened with scruples as to the manner of its 
winning. It is hardly necessary to dwell on the curious 
circumstance (supposing that they were not placed there 
ready to St. Helena's hand) that these crosses of scantling 
— for they could have been little more if one man was 
to carry them — should have been thus carefully preserved 
and have withstood the damp of the earth for over three 
centuries. Oddly enough, however, as Colonel Conder 
points out in his article on Jerusalem in the " Dictionary 
of the Bible " that is edited by Dr. Hastings, " the legend 
of Helena's miraculous discovery of the Cross is un- 
noticed by contemporary writers, though in a.d. 326 the 



GORDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 315 



mother of Constantine visited Bethlehem and Olivet. 
The Cross itself is only noticed by St. Cyril twenty 
years after the great Basilica was built, and in a.d. 383 
by Jerome. . . . The story of the finding of the Cross is 
first told by Rufinus in a.d. 410, and by Theodoret about 
a.d. 440." 

Therefore it would seem possible that the whole of 
this marvellous tale may be a legend of a post- Con- 
stantine period. In such case nothing remains to guide 
us as to the reason of the building of the Basilica by 
Constantine at this particular spot. Possibly it was 
the discovery of the old rock graves, which since the 
sixteenth century have been asserted to have held the 
remains of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. This 
tomb of Nicodemus, by the way, Colonel Conder sug- 
gests, in the article from which I have already quoted, 
may have been hollowed for a very different purpose. 
"It is not impossible that this monument may be the 
real tomb of the kings, but it is also possible that all 
were buried near Siloam within the city walls ; and future 
excavation may reveal 'the sepulchres of David' near 
Siloam." 

Among the seas of uncertainty which surge round the 
sacred relics of Jerusalem it is refreshing to stand upon 
something that is beyond doubt, even if it be clearly 
connected with the events of Bible history. We visited 
the establishment of the Sisters of Zion twice, and on 
the second occasion saw everything that the place has to 
show. The good nuns are Russians, but, fortunately, the 
lady who conducted us could speak French. This church 
and convent abuts on the Via Dolorosa or Sorrowful 
Street, which here is spanned by an arch called that of 
the Ecce Homo, where, by tradition, Pilate produced the 
Saviour before the crowd, saying to them and to all the 
generations that were to follow, " Behold the man." 
Whether or no the event happened on this spot none can 
say, but Baedeker is of opinion that here are the remains 



316 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of a Roman triumphal arch that has been remodelled 
since the days of the Romans. In the choir of the church 
of the Sisters of Zion, however, is a smaller arch, which 
joined that spanning the street, and must at any rate be 
very old. 

What admits of no question is the ancient pavement 
which is to be seen in the basement of the convent. 
This must date from the Roman days, and in all pro- 
bability was trodden by our Lord. It is laid in large 
blocks, and one part of it, which is comparatively unworn, 
seems to have formed part of the flooring of a courtyard 
or square. Upon three of the slabs are lines and patterns 
that were evidently made use of in games played by the 
soldiers. These struck me as very similar to those which 
have recently been uncovered in the Forum of Rome, 
where I saw them on my journey to Cyprus. One of 
the Jerusalem slabs has little cups cut in it, which may 
have served some purpose in a game not unlike that of 
our modern marbles, still favoured by school children. 
Doubtless the guard gambled on this court while they 
awaited the result of the trial of prisoners in the judg- 
ment hall, thus whiling away the interval between their 
hours of duty. 

Evidently the court ended and the line of the 
street began at a certain limit within the precincts of 
the convent, since in curious contrast to the smooth 
blocks, polished only by the constant passage of human 
feet, those immediately beyond can be seen to be 
much worn by the hoofs of horses. The sister told 
me also that beneath the vaults of the convent, under- 
ground passages have been discovered recently which 
run towards the temple enclosure, forming, doubtless, 
part of the system of the ancient fortifications of the 
city. These tunnels I was unable to inspect as they 
have been closed up, she said, owing to the bad air 
and damp that emanate from them. 

On leaving this most interesting house of the 



GOKDON'S TOMB AND GOLGOTHA 317 



Sisters of Zion, we walked through the Jewish quarter 
of Jerusalem, examining it more thoroughly than we 
had found time to do before. The dirt of the place is 
truly wonderful, and it is strange that human beings 
should live there in health through the scorching months 
of an Eastern summer. Still they do live, which speaks 
well for their innate vitality. The stamp of the in- 
habitants is much the same as that of the Jews of 
Tiberias, although here they are somewhat more virile 
in appearance. Also, their dress is better; in certain 
instances, indeed, it gave evidence of wealth and a kind 
of incongruous taste. Many of these Hebrews, I am told, 
like their brethren of Tiberias, live upon the charity 
of co-religionists in other lands. 

Next to the filth of the streets I think that the 
beggars are one of the greatest annoyances to be met 
with in Jerusalem. At certain spots, and notably near 
the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, 
and outside the house of Caiaphas and the Gate of 
Zion, sit miserable creatures covered with sores, as 
Lazarus sat at the door of Dives, who utter without 
cease a low, unhappy wail. Now, too, as in the day 
of our Lord, lepers roll about the roadway, and ex- 
hibit their festering stumps. I saw none, however, 
with the skin "as white as snow" of the Bible, if 
indeed this form of the disease still exists. Their 
affliction seems to be of a kind which I have met 
with in South Africa, whereof one symptom is the 
dropping off of the lingers and toes at the joints. 

Once I had a Kaffir servant who was a leper after 
this sort, an excellent man in every other way. But of 
that unfortunate this is not the place to write. 

Another thorn in the flesh of the traveller, or 
rather other thorns, are the tradesfolk of Jerusalem. 
The moment that he emerges from his lodging these 
importunate persons rush at him as pike rush at a 
frog thrown into a pond, seeking to drag him into 



318 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



their shops, and there digest him, or his cash, at 
leisure. At times the excess of their servile annoyance 
makes the temper, even of him who is experienced in 
wandering, a thing very difficult to keep. It is rumoured 
that after a course of it even blameless and teetotal Deans 
have been known to express irritation in terms which 
would have vexed their Chapters. 



CHAPTER XXII 



THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 

The best time to examine the Church of the Sepulchre, 
which for ages past a vast majority of the pilgrims to 
Jerusalem have considered its greatest and most impres- 
sive sight, is so soon as the doors are open in the morning, 
before the swarms of Russians have begun to gather there. 
On the day of the visit which I am about to describe, 
fortunately for us, beyond a few isolated individuals, none 
of these appeared. Probably the rest of them were en- 
gaged en masse in travelling to Jordan or some other 
distant spot. Thus it came about that for a long while 
we were practically alone in the place, to us a great 
advantage. 

This church, or rather the rotunda which preceded it, 
was built in the year 336. In 614 — I cull the dates from 
Baedeker — the Persians destroyed it. About 620 it was 
rebuilt with additions. This was the church which Arculf 
saw in or about the year 700. He says of it in the course 
of a long description : — 

" The church of the Holy Sepulchre is very large and round, 
encompassed with three walls, with a broad space between each, 
and containing three altars of wonderful workmanship in the 
middle wall, at three different points — on the south, on the 
north, on the west. It is supported by twelve stone columns of 
extraordinary magnitude ; and it has eight doors or entrances 
through the three opposite walls, four fronting the north-east 
and four to the south-east. In the middle space of the inner 
circle is a round grotto cut in the solid rock, the interior of which 
is large enough to allow nine men to pray standing, and the roof 

319 



320 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of which is about a foot and a half higher than a man of ordinary 
stature. The entrance is from the east side, and the whole of 
the exterior is covered with choice marble to the very top of the 
roof, which is adorned with gold, and supports a large golden 
cross. Within, on the north side, is the tomb of our Lord, hewn 
out of the same rock, seven feet in length, and rising three 
palms above the floor." 

More than two centuries later fire twice did the place 
much damage, and in the year 1010 it was destroyed by the 
Moslems, to be reconstructed in 1075, and afterwards greatly- 
added to by the Crusaders. In 1187 and 1244 the church 
was damaged or destroyed by various unbelievers. In 
1310 it was rebuilt. In 1808 it was burnt down, to be 
raised up again as we see it now, in 1810. Such is the 
stormy and chequered history of this remarkable fane. 

Formerly it had double doors facing south, with a con- 
siderable open space in front, but now one of these has 
been walled up. Passing through the other, almost the 
first object to be seen is the Stone of Anointment, whereon 
the body of Christ is supposed to have lain. It is not re- 
assuring to the reverent traveller, especially if he chances 
never to have studied the subject for himself, and to believe 
that here was the unquestioned scene of our Lord's death 
and resurrection, to consult his faithful Baedeker, and to 
read therein that " the stone has often been changed." Yet 
even as he reads he may lift his eyes to see, as I did, two 
devout pilgrims, a man and a woman well on in years, with 
heaving breasts and tear-stained eyes, kneel down and kiss 
the relic with the utmost passion — that relic which " has 
often been changed." 

Near by is another stone, where it is announced that 
the women stood while the anointing of the holy Body was 
in progress. A few steps, and we come to the rotunda 
beneath the great dome, in the centre of which stands the 
sepulchre, the reputed burial-place of Christ, containing a 
split slab of marble, where His body is said to have lain. 
Evidently, therefore, it has changed since the days of 



THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 321 



Arculf, who told Adamnan that " This tomb is broad 
enough to hold one man lying on his back, and has a 
raised division in the stone to separate his legs." In the 
time of Felix Fabri, however, as now, it was " covered with 
a slab of polished white marble, on which mass can be 
celebrated." He says also : — 

" This cave has no window, nor is there any light in it save 
what comes from nineteen lamps which burn in it, which lamps 
hang above the Lord's Sepulchre ; and inasmuch as the cave is 
small, the fire of the lamps make a smoke and stench, which 
greatly troubles those who enter the place and remain therein." 

Baedeker says that in the crusading days the Sepulchre 
sanctuary was round, with a round tower, but already 
separated into the Angels' Chapel and the actual burying- 
place as it is to-day. Afterwards it was polygonal, and in 
1555 the nuisance which Felix notices was remedied by 
the piercing of holes in the roof to allow the smoke and 
smell to escape. To-day it is hexagonal in shape, and the 
pilgrim passes into the Sepulchre through the Angels' 
Chapel with its many lamps which belong to the different 
sects. 

On one side of the Sepulchre, the north, if I remember 
right, is a curious opening in the marble not unlike that 
out of which the anchor chain runs in the bow of a 
steamer. Through this hole at the Feast of the Greek 
Easter is exhibited the miracle of the Holy Fire, which is 
said by the Greeks — the Latins refusing to participate in 
the fraud after the sixteenth century — to descend annu- 
ally from heaven, for what exact purpose I have been 
unable to discover from any authority within my reach. 
However, when it has descended — or when the priest has 
struck a match inside the Sepulchre — he thrusts a lighted 
torch through the hole, from which some privileged person 
lights his lamp or candle. From this again others take 
the fire, fighting and screaming to be the first, and burn- 
ing their breasts to show that these flames are harmless 

x 



322 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



till at last the whole vast space is starred with the light 
of thousands of tapers. 

The " miracle " is of old standing. Colonel Conder 
says of it in the article to which I have referred already : 
" The strange festival of the Holy Fire seems to have 
perpetuated the pagan fire-feasts of earlier days — perhaps 
once celebrated at the same spot." However this may be, 
when Bernard the Wise, who is, I think, the first to men- 
tion it, visited the Sepulchre in 867 the custom was already 
established. He says : " I must not, however, omit to 
state that on Holy Saturday, which is the eve of Easter, 
the office is begun in the morning in this church, and after 
it is ended the Kyrie Eleison is chanted, until an angel 
comes and lights the lamps which hang over the aforesaid 
Sepulchre, of which light the patriarch gives their share 
to the bishops and to the rest of the people, that each 
may illuminate his own house." 

It was because of this "miracle" that the Caliph 
Hakim is said to have destroyed the church in 1010. 
The Jacobite writer, Gregory Abulfaragius, the author 
of the "Universal History from the Creation," who must 
have written about 1270, says: — 

" The author of this persecution (that of 1010) was some 
enemy of the Christians, who told Hakim that, when the 
Christians assembled in their temple at Jerusalem to cele- 
brate Easter, the chaplains of the church, making use of a 
pious fraud, greased the chain of iron that held the lamp over 
the tomb with oil of balsam, and that when the Arab officer 
sealed up the door which led to the tomb, they applied a 
match through the roof to the other extremity of the chain, 
and the fire descended immediately to the wick of the lamp 
and lighted it. Then the worshippers burst into tears, and 
cried ' Kyrie Eleison,' supposing that it was fire from heaven 
that fell upon the tomb ; and they were thus strengthened 
in their faith." 

Really when he learnt the truth of the matter, it is 
not wonderful that in his turn the Caliph Hakim was 



THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 323 



strengthened in his indignation against the Christian 
religion and the anointed cheats who practised such a 
fraud. 

In the day of Felix Fabri it appears that the head 
priest was shut by the Greeks "into the Lord's monu- 
ment with an unlighted candle, which he brings forth 
lighted with a loud cry, and from which all the lamps 
are lighted." But Felix, although credulous at times, 
was too sensible a man to be thus imposed upon. He 
says : " But it is not lighted by a miracle but artificially ; 
albeit the ignorant mob raises its cries to heaven, prais- 
ing God, as though a miracle had been wrought, and so 
they noise it abroad among the people, even among the 
Saracens." He goes on to tell how that the Saracens 
said that if this fire was really brought down from 
heaven and the Christians could prove it, they would 
be willing to be converted. 

Felix narrates a fable, which he calls a "beautiful 
story," anent this fire. It is that when Narcissus, an 
ancient bishop of Jerusalem, was about to hold service 
on Easter eve his acolytes told him that there was no 
oil. But, being holy and believing and full of faith, he 
sent for water instead. When it came he blessed it, 
and filled the lamps. Then suddenly "by a wondrous 
power unheard of in any other age, the water tooli upon 
itself the fatness of oil, and being lighted from heaven, 
made the light of the lamp shine more brightly than 
it was wont to do." 

This very curious event, which chanced under the 
Emperor Severus 211 years before the day of Constan- 
tine, was, it is suggested, the beginning of the miracle, 
which thereafter repeated itself annually. 

As may be imagined, this yearly wonder happening 
in a crowded church — I believe that 6000 people can 
press into the space beneath the dome, although at the 
time of writing I am unable to find an authority for the 
statement — is not unattended with danger. In 1834, 



324 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



indeed, a fearful catastrophe occurred, of which, fortunately, 
we have an account in "Visits to Monasteries in the 
Levant." The late Hon. Robert Curzon, jun., the author of 
this interesting work, was travelling in the Holy Land, and 
chanced to be present in the church upon that dreadful 
occasion. He tells how " the patriarch was carried out of 
the Sepulchre in triumph, on the shoulders of the people 
he had deceived," and how, overcome by the smoke and 
smell, three unhappy wretches " fell from the upper range 
of galleries, and were dashed to pieces on the heads of the 
people below," an Armenian girl dying in her place merely 
of heat and fatigue. 

Afterwards Mr. Curzon and his party set out to return to 
the convent where they were lodging, the soldiers of their 
escort making a way for them. When he reached the 
station traditionally occupied by the Virgin during the 
Crucifixion he saw a number of people lying on the floor of 
the church. At first he thought that they were resting, 
but at length coming to a great pile of them perceived that 
these were dead bodies. Now I must quote, since nothing 
can give a better idea of this fearful event than the words 
of the eye-witness who describes its details. Many of 
those whom he took to be peaceful sleepers were he 
found " quite black with suffocation, and farther on were 
others all bloody and covered with the brains and entrails 
of those who had been trodden to pieces by the crowd. At 
this time there was no crowd in this part of the church ; 
but a little farther on, round the corner towards the great 
door, the people, who were quite panic-struck, continued 
to press forward, and every one was doing his utmost to 
escape. The guards, outside, frightened at the rush from 
within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, 
and the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers 
with their bayonets killed numbers of fainting wretches, 
and the walls were spattered with blood and brains of men 
who had been felled, like oxen, with the butt-ends of the 
soldiers' muskets. Every one struggled to defend himself 




THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 325 



or to get away, and in the melee all who fell were immedi- 
ately trampled to death by the rest. So desperate and 
savage did the fight become that even the panic-struck and 
frightened pilgrims appear at last to have been more 
intent upon the destruction of each other than desirous 
to save themselves." 

Mr. Curzon then tells of his own fight for life, and of 
his hideous struggle with one of the Pasha Ibrahim's 
colonels, whom in the end he overthrew. The officer died 
where he fell, but Mr. Curzon found his legs again, and 
succeeded in winning his way back to the sacristy of the 
Catholics, and thence to the room adjoining the church, 
which had been assigned to him by the monks. He says 
"the dead were lying in heaps, even upon the stone of 
unction; and I saw full 400 wretched people, dead and 
living, heaped promiscuously one upon another, in some 
places above five feet high." 

The site of the church of the Holy Sepulchre has wit- 
nessed many tragedies during the last fifteen centuries, 
but few of them can have been more terrible than that of 
sixty-five years ago, which Mr. Curzon describes. Yet 
from Easter to Easter still " the miracle " goes on. 

Here I must explain, for the benefit of those readers 
who may be unacquainted with the conditions which pre- 
vail at Jerusalem, that this church of the Sepulchre is the 
joint possession of various Christian sects, who have held 
their rites in it for many ages. In or about the year 1342 
the traveller Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, lord of Yieux- 
Chateau, writes : " In the church of the Holy Sepulchre 
reside also many other sorts of Christians, J acobites, Arme- 
nians, Abyssinians, from the country of Prester-John, and 
Christians of the girdle." 

To come to a later age, we have evidence on the point 
from the pen of the Rev. Henry Maundrell, who was 
elected chaplain of their Aleppo factory by the company 
of Levant merchants in 1695, and who died while still a 
young man at Aleppo in 170JL In the interval he visited 



326 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 

Jerusalem and wrote an interesting and valuable account 
of what he saw. Speaking of the church of the Holy 
Sepulchre he says that " in these places almost every 
Christian nation anciently maintained a small society of 
monks, each society having its proper quarter assigned to 
it by appointment of the Turk, such as the Latins, Greeks, 
Syrians, Armenians, Abyssinians, Georgians, Nestorians, 
Coptites, Maronites, &c." In his age, however, most of these 
communities had been taxed out by the oppressions of the 
Turks, so that only the Latins, Greeks, Armenians, and 
Coptites were left. As in our time, each of these frater- 
nities had its own altars and sanctuaries, where they 
possessed the right of celebrating their services to the 
exclusion of all others. He continues: — 

" But that which has always been the great prize contended 
for by the several sects is the command and appropriation of the 
Holy Sepulchre, a privilege contested with so much unchristian 
fury and animosity, especially between the Greeks and Latins, 
that, in disputing which party should go into it to celebrate their 
mass, they have sometimes proceeded to blows and wounds even 
at the very door of the sepulchre, mingling their own blood with 
the sacrifices, an evidence of which fury the father guardian 
showed us in a great scar upon his arm, which he told us was 
the mark of a wound given him by a sturdy Greek priest in one 
of these unholy wars. Who can expect ever to see these holy 
... places rescued from the hands of infidels? Or, if they should 
be recovered, what deplorable contests might be expected to 
follow about them, seeing, even in their present state of cap- 
tivity, they are made the occasion of such unchristian rage and 
animosity ? ' ' 

If the actual conflicts described by Maundrell have 
ceased, the spirit of them remains, and well may we echo 
the questions which conclude his remarks. The quarrels 
of the Christian sects are the object of the continual 
wonderment and mockery of the Moslem masters of the 
holy places, whose business it is to criticise and control 
them. 




THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 327 



I imagine that few visitors who care to take the trouble 
to think, even if they have never questioned the authenti- 
city of the site, can return faith-whole from an inspection 
of the Holy Sepulchre. The monks of various persuasions 
and different periods have made the mistake of leaving 
nothing to the imagination. Thus, in addition to about a 
dozen chapels dedicated to sundry saints and supposed to 
be connected with them in this way and in that, and to 
the great Greek cathedral, the Catholicon — in itself a fine 
building, but to my taste much marred by its profuse and 
tawdry ornamentation — there are many other sacred spots, 
each of them fixed to a hair's breadth. 

Thus we have the Centre of the World accurately, 
if unscientifically determined, and the place of the 
burial of the skull of Adam, who was constructed of 
clay taken from this locality. Then we see the Mount 
of Calvary — the reader will remember, by the way, as 
I have pointed out, that nowhere in the Bible is it 
said that Calvary was on a mount — beneath which 
Adam was interred, until the Blood, flowing from the 
Cross, brought him to life again. Melchisedec, too, was 
buried here, and the socket made for the Cross in the 
rock has been carefully preserved, and is now lined with 
silver. Also the pilgrim is shown — and, if he is a 
Russian, kisses the place — where stood the crosses of 
the two thieves. Next there is an underground chapel 
called that of St. Helena, where the Cross was found. 
Near the altar, too, is a seat in which the Empress 
Helena sat while the Cross was unearthed. Unfortu- 
nately for the genuineness of this relic, as the cold- 
blooded Baedeker points out, an Armenian patriarch 
of the seventeenth century, complained in his day that 
he had frequently been obliged to renew this seat 
because the piety of pilgrims led them to bear it away 
piecemeal. He adds, does the sceptic Baedeker, " Some 
explorers regard this chapel as part of the ancient city 
moat." 



328 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



To this day pilgrims play the same pranks as poor 
Father Barnabe told me of on Mount Tabor almost with 
tears; indeed, if left alone, they would carry off the 
whole place. In this chapel of St. Helena, and on 
the staircase leading to it, I saw names scribbled upon 
the walls. Greatly did such conduct scandalise Brother 
Fabri, a hater of self-advertisement, and, above all 
things, a gentleman. He tells how vanity led some 
noblemen to inscribe their names, with the tokens 
of their birth and rank, on the walls of the church, 
and even to paint their coats of arms and cut their 
initials with mallets and chisels on the pillars and 
marbles, thereby vexing and scandalising all men. He 
adds : — 

" I have seen some vainglorious nobles, whose pride had 
brought them to such a pitch of folly, that when they went 
up into the Chapel of Mount Calvary and bowed them- 
selves down upon the holy rock, wherein is the secret-hole 
of the Cross, they would pretend to be praying, and within 
the circle of their arms would secretly scratch with exceed- 
ing sharp tools their shields, with the marks — I cannot 
say of their noble birth, but rather of their silliness, for a 
perpetual memorial of their folly. But this they were forced 
to do secretly, for had the guardian of the holy rock, whose 
name is George, seen them doing so, he would have dragged 
them away by the hair of their head. The same madness 
moved some to inscribe their names, shields, and armorial 
bearings with sharp irons on the slab which covers the tomb 
on the most holy sepulchre of the Lord." 

Felix goes on to describe in delightful language the 
feelings of the " devout and simple-minded pilgrim " like 
himself, when he came across the traces of all this in- 
dustry. Apparently it induced him to curse and to 
swear, and to express angry hopes that the engraver 
would come to total grief, or, at least, lose his hand, 
and to petition the Almighty that He would be pleased 



THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 329 



to see to the matter. One is glad to learn, though 
elsewhere I have read otherwise, that German nobles 
alone followed this evil fashion, which often caused 
poor Fabri, their fellow-countryman, to blush for them, 
" both among Christians and Pagans," for as the proverb 
which he cites says neatly enough, "the hands of fools 
befoul the sides of the house." One "fool" in par- 
ticular almost drove him mad, for he was as fond of 
writing his name as that monarch of whom it is told 
that, armed with a piece of chalk, he might be met 
rushing breathless from room to room of his palace, 
while after him struggled attendants whose business it 
was, for a sufficient reason, diligently to apply the 
sponge and blot out the royal compositions. One is 
glad to learn that he, the pilgrim, not the king, came 
to a bad end, so that his kinsmen and friends "would 
have given much gold could they have wiped out his 
name from the earth which he had been at such pains 
to paint up everywhere." 

I fear, however, that he has left many descendants, 
and it has been my lot to study their signs-manual and 
works of religion, prose, poetry and humour, not only 
at home, but in every distant land, and in every famous 
or sacred place which I have visited throughout the 
world. With Felix, I pray that writer's cramp of the 
most virulent nature may paralyse their scribbling 
fingers. 

Besides those which I have enumerated, here are 
many other places to be seen ; for instance, the Chapel 
of the Forty Martyrs, the Chapel of St. James, the 
Chapel of St. Thekla, the Chapel of the Archangel 
Michael, the Chapel of St. Mary of Egypt, and the 
Chapel of Mary Magdalene. In the church itself, too, 
are more sites, such as the spot where the Lord appeared 
to Mary Magdalene, the Column of Scourging, the Foot- 
prints of Christ, the Prison of Christ, the Chapel of 
the Crowning with Thorns, the Chapel of the Raising 



330 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of the Cross, the Column of Derision, and the Chapel 
of St. Longinus. 

Longinus by the way is fabled, by the monks of the 
sixth century and their successors, to be that Roman 
who pierced the side of the Saviour with his spear, and 
was recovered from the blindness of one eye by the 
blood which fell upon it. Afterwards he became a 
Christian and a saint. Near to his chapel is another 
of the Parting of the Raiment, and so forth. 

I do not dwell in detail upon these various spots 
and their traditions because, to be plain, I have no 
faith in them. Even if it be admitted that the Church 
of the Holy Sepulchre does cover the place of the 
Crucifixion and its attendant events, which I believe 
to be most improbable, it is beyond credence that all 
these localities should be known with such exactitude. 
Moreover, many of them have been changed during the 
passage of the centuries. Their details, architectural 
and other, can be studied in any book of reference. As 
for the general effect produced upon a visitor by so 
much ornamentation, so many candles, and such a diver- 
sity of occurrences, miraculous and spiritual, said to 
be concentrated beneath these roofs, it is, I confess, 
bewildering. Days must be spent there before all the 
component parts become clear to the mind in their 
proper sequence, and those days many would prefer to 
devote to other objects, to them of greater interest. 

What I was very glad to see, however, were the 
sword, spurs, and the cross worn by Godfrey de Bouillon, 
which are shown in the Latin Sacristy, especially the 
sword, a plain weapon of the ordinary Crusader form, 
wherewith he is said to have halved a giant Saracen as 
easily as a juggler severs a silk handkerchief. Godfrey, it 
will be remembered, was the hero of the first crusade, and 
after the capture of the city, was elected King of Jeru- 
salem ! This title he declined, saying that where the 
Saviour wore a crown of thorns he would have none of 



THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 331 



gold, and in place of it took that of Baron of the Holy 
Sepulchre. He died, or was poisoned, in the year 1100, 
aged only thirty-eight, and in this church his grave is 
shown. It is something of a shock to read in Baedeker, 
hard to be convinced, that these relics, which look 
old and authentic enough, are "antiquities of doubtful 
genuineness." But what is there in this church that 
is not doubtful? 

Not one of the least interesting sights of this ancient 
place, hallowed by so much suffering, so many traditions 
faithfully believed in for fifteen centuries, and the prayers 
of tens of thousands of good and earnest Christians, is, 
from some retired nook beneath the rotunda, to watch the 
behaviour of the various visitors. There is the superior 
person who knows all about it, and says so in a loud voice, 
waving his guide-books at sundry architectural details 
which he explains for the benefit of the unlearned, some- 
times by a trifling confusion tacking the wrong description 
on to the object under view. Yonder stands the glib 
dragoman, rattling off his tale with the unconvincing 
facility of a parrot. Next come Russian pilgrims, pious 
happy folk who know no doubt, whose faith is built upon 
a rock. If you were to suggest to these that this was not 
the real spot of the Crucifixion and the rising of the 
Saviour, probably they would look upon you as an emis- 
sary of antichrist, or at the least, an infidel. With sighs 
and tears and beating of the breast such as those of the 
publican in the parable, they go by, genuflecting, kissing, 
prostrating themselves, while the learned person of whom 
they take no notice, points them out and discourses upon 
them as though they were wild animals. 

Then appear another party — three ladies, two gentle- 
men, and a youth of about twelve, transatlantic in origin 
and beautifully dressed, all of them. Their hands in their 
pockets, they stroll down the church of the Crusaders 
chattering loudly — but every one chatters here, it is the 
pleasing habit of the place. What does surprise and make 



332 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the observer in his corner wonder if he sees aright is the 
fact that the two gentlemen of the party wear their hats, 
the head of the youth being adorned with a brilliant fez. 
The middle-aged inhabitant of these islands who, do what 
he will, cannot altogether keep himself up to date, rubs 
his eyes, remembering that ever so many years ago he was 
taught to take off his hat, even in a tramp's lodging-house, 
if Mr. and Mrs. Tramp were at home, and that the same 
rule might a fortiori be supposed to hold in what is, after 
all, the oldest, and, by many, the most venerated fane 
dedicated to the Almighty in all Christendom. Even if 
these visitors to that place had no belief or reverence for 
its Master, it might still be supposed to hold. 

Ultimately this particular party, still covered, advanced 
to the door of the Chapel of the Angels and the Holy 
Sepulchre. David, our dragoman, a man of mild and in- 
offensive manners, sprang from his seat, muttering some- 
thing. It appears that as a native Christian of Jerusalem 
he has certain rights in the Holy Sepulchre. 

" What are you going to do ? " I asked. 

" Knock their hats off," he answered ; and, pushing 
through the little crowd of Russians, David placed him- 
self at the low door of the Chapel of the Angels, quite 
prepared for action. 

Whether it was that the gentlemen saw something 
threatening in his eye, or, as was also suggested, that the 
entrance being so low it proved more convenient to pass it 
uncovered, I know not. At least, they removed their hats, 
so David was not obliged to resort to a violence which I 
am sure is foreign to his nature. Anyhow, his deter- 
mination to use it if necessary, sent him up, under all the 
circumstances, at least fifty per cent, in my estimation. 

The Holy Sepulchre, apparently, did not interest them 
much, and the pilgrims emerged almost as quickly as they 
went in, replacing their headgear as they came. Then 
a really good idea struck them. The ladies, one gentle- 
man, and the hopeful in the fez, arranged themselves in 



THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE 333 



an artistic group over against the sacred building, with the 
wall of the dome for a background ; while the other gentle- 
man, with much preparation, unslung his kodak, focussed 
and photographed them. Oh ! that Felix Fabri had been 
there to see, and could have bequeathed us his impressions 
of that inimitable scene. As for myself, feeling my temper 
getting the better of me, and not wishing to be involved 
in an unseemly dispute, I left the church. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES AND THE WAILING 
OF THE JEWS 

We visited many other places in Jerusalem, but few of 
these impressed themselves much upon me, principally 
because I could not bring myself to believe that there was 
even a probability that they had to do with the events 
which are reported to have happened in them. Thus, 
there is a fine Armenian church, which as a church is 
worth looking at, where St. James is said to have been 
beheaded. He may have been, but I can discover no 
sufficient evidence of the fact. All that the Bible, a 
much-neglected book of reference, says about it is that 
when Herod the king stretched forth his hand to vex 
certain of the Church "he killed James the brother of 
John with the sword." Well, it may have happened here. 
In this church there are old porcelain picture-tiles, which 
are really very curious. 

Then there is the house of Caiaphas, now an Armenian 
monastery, where we saw an altar, said to be made of the 
stone which closed the entrance to the sepulchre of Christ. 
This same stone is also to be seen in the Chapel of the 
Angels in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a difficulty 
which Fabri gets over by stating that the faithful cut it 
into two. By the way, in his time, pilgrims stole frag- 
ments of that stone almost more greedily than anything 
else. A companion of Fabri's bribed one of the Armenian 
guardians with two ducats to break a piece from it, which 
the pair of them did by stealth in the darkness. This 
knight died at sea — surely the Armenian guardian should 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 335 



also have died, but perhaps he did — and Felix, evidently 
much to his delight, inherited the fragment, which he took 
home with him to Ulm. In this monastery also we were 
shown a little cell where the Saviour is said to have been 
imprisoned before his trial, also the place where Peter 
denied his Master, and the tombs of many Armenian 
patriarchs. The last are undoubtedly genuine; for the 
other sites there seems to be no real authority, although, 
much as they are to-day, they were all of them shown to 
pilgrims in the time of Fabri. In a few brief lines Baedeker 
disposes of their claims. 

Another noted building is the Coenaculum or the 
Chamber of the Last Supper, now a mosque, but evidently 
from the style of the architecture formerly used by Chris- 
tians of the Crusader period, probably as a church. We 
know that every building in Jerusalem has been destroyed 
once, if not more often, since the time of our Lord, and 
this fact is fatal to any illusion connected with an upper 
chamber standing in the year 1900, and exhibiting even a 
stone upon which the Saviour is reported to have sat at 
the last Supper. The place, however, has many traditions. 
For instance, the Virgin is said to have died there : also it 
is the reputed scene of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon 
the Apostles. Lastly, in an adjoining room is a coffer 
covered with embroidered cloth, alleged to be a copy of 
the sarcophagus of David, who, as the Moslems declare, is 
buried in the vaults beneath. All authorities report that 
it is comparatively modern, nor was I sufficiently in- 
terested to attempt to see it, to do which its Moslem 
guardians must be rather heavily " insulted " by the tra- 
velling Christian. 

All we know is that somewhere in the City of David, 
David was buried ; somewhere stood that upper chamber 
where were uttered the immortal and immortalising words 
recorded by St. John; somewhere rose the palace of 
Caiaphas where Jesus Christ was mocked, scourged, and 
crowned with those thorns that symbolise the lot of all 



336 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



humanity. Whether it was here or 100 yards or 500 
yards distant, what does it matter ? It matters nothing 
at all. 

A more interesting expedition to my mind is to hire 
horses and ride to the Mount of Olives by way of the 
Valley of Hinnoin. This is a desolate, waterless place, asso- 
ciated with many an ancient, evil memory, whereof it was 
prophesied " that this place shall no more be called Tophet, 
nor the Valley of the son of Hinnom, but the Valley of 
slaughter." Here is that Tophet " which is in the Valley 
of the children of Hinnom," which Josiah destroyed when 
" he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, 
and filled their places with the bones of men . . . that 
no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through 
the fire to Molech." 

From this valley Hinnom we get the name Gehenna, a 
synonym of hell, and near to it is the Aceldama, or House 
of the Field of Blood, where for generations pilgrims have 
been buried. Hence it is easy to see how, as Dr. Bliss 
informed me he had proved by his excavations, the ancient 
Jerusalem must have stretched much further in this 
direction than does the modern town. The natural lie of 
the land, and the defences provided by the position and 
fall of the valley, make it almost imperative that this 
area should have been included in the walls. Following 
round it we came to the Pool of Siloam, now an evil- 
smelling mud-hole, from which, holding a handkerchief 
to my face, I was glad to escape as fast as my horse could 
carry me. 

After riding for some distance along the Valley of 
Jehoshaphat, we began the ascent of the Mount of Olives, 
and, following a steep and narrow path, came to the Rus- 
sian church and hospice which stand upon the summit. 
Buildings belonging to the Russians are numerous in 
the Holy Land. When looking at them it has more than 
once occurred to me that in the case of new troubles in 
that region, their stout walls and towers would form very 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 337 



serviceable coigns of vantage to a power which for re- 
ligious, if for no other reasons, would not be averse to 
establishing itself on the coasts of Palestine. Indeed, 
although I have little to go on beyond the results of my 
own observation, I believe that the erection of so many 
hospices and kindred establishments has a steady political 
purpose quite distinct from any present pious and charit- 
able use of these edifices. Those who live may see its 
development before they are older by twenty years. 

Close to the church stands a belvidere tower, which 
must be quite a hundred and fifty feet high, and is built in 
six storeys. To its top where, if I remember right, bells 
are hung, those whose heads are strong enough may climb 
by a circular winding stair of iron, protected with a 
singularly low and inefficient handrail, over which it would 
be easy to pitch in a fit of vertigo. I contented myself 
with stopping at one of the lower platforms, whence the 
view was magnificent. 

Below were stretched the valley of Jehoshaphat, 
Mount Moriah crowned with its mosques, and the Hill 
of Zion; every detail, indeed, of walled Jerusalem, with 
the rugged mountains and valleys that lie about her. 
Still more wonderful is the prospect to the east, for there, 
four thousand feet below gleam the misty waters of the 
Dead Sea, encircled with stony hills, and separated from 
Jerusalem by leagues of the most desolate country to be 
found in all the earth. There, too, a green streak, drawn 
as it were across a drab-coloured sheet of paper, runs the 
river Jordan, and beyond it rise dim mysterious moun- 
tains, where Moses once stood to gaze upon the Promised 
Land. Altogether the scene was worth the climb up 
that uncomfortable and insufficient stair. From the top, 
whence poor David returned exceeding dizzy, it must be 
even more impressive. 

Leaving the Russian buildings we rode to the Chapel 
of the Ascension. Since the seventeenth century this 
has been in the possession of the Mahommedans, although 



338 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



the various sects of Christians have prayer recesses within 
its walls, and on great occasions are permitted to hold 
services according to their respective rites. A Moslem 
custodian showed us the place, pointing out the footprint 
of Christ, said to have been impressed upon the rock as 
He rose heavenward, which, says Baedeker, "must have 
been frequently renewed." By the footprint is a small 
round hole, and as our guide seemed thoroughly conver- 
sant with all the circumstances surrounding the Ascen- 
sion, I asked him what it was and how it came there. 
Not in the least abashed he replied that when the 
" Hadji " went up to heaven He had His walking-stick 
in His hand, with which He struck the rock as He sprang 
from it, leaving the mark we see to-day. I thanked him 
very much for this interesting information, and we parted 
with mutual regret. 

In this connection the reader may remember that the 
site shown from the earliest days on the Mount of Olives 
does not tally with what we are told in Scripture. St. 
Luke says : " And he led them out as far as to Bethany ; 
and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it 
came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from 
them, and carried up into heaven." Now Bethany lies 
some way beyond the Mount of Olives, at a greater 
distance from Jerusalem, whither it is especially stated 
the disciples returned "with great joy." 

From the Chapel of the Ascension we went to the 
Church of the Lord's Prayer, that it is said, the Saviour 
repeated to the Apostles on this spot. The buildings 
consist of a chapel and a quadrangle, enclosing an open 
space and surrounded by covered cloisters, on the walls of 
which are marble slabs with the Lord's Prayer engraved 
upon them in over thirty different languages. This 
graceful and original building was set here in 1868 at 
the expense of a certain Princess Latour d'Auvergne, who 
has now been some few years dead. Long before her day, 
however, indeed before that of Saewulf, who lived about 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 339 



1100, a church stood here, which he describes by tradition 
as having been very beautiful, until it was entirely de- 
stroyed by the Pagans. In the centre of the south 
cloister is a life-sized marble of great artistic merit, 
representing the Princess herself as she imagined that 
she would be after death. Her body, however, does not lie 
beneath. Near by to this monument is an urn containing 
the heart of her father and a slab with a long passage 
concerning him, transcribed from some historian. 

Leaving the cloisters, we were guided by the sister 
in charge, one of the little community of nuns who live 
here, to the chapel, which was built also by the Princess 
Latour. Observing wide and dangerous cracks in the 
walls, I asked why they were not mended, whereupon, 
almost with tears, the good sister told me a sad story. 
It seems that the Princess, who was a woman of large 
wealth, after she had built the church and court, con- 
tributed from year to year sufficient for their upkeep 
and for the necessities of the nuns. Further, she an- 
nounced her intention of endowing the establishment. 
But death came upon her very suddenly, before she 
had time even to make a will, and those who inherited 
her possessions seem to have recognised no responsibilities 
in connection with what they may have considered a freak 
of the departed. 

The result is that the few sisters who remain in the 
convent are quite penniless, and live on charity and 
what they can earn by the making of butter to sell 
in Jerusalem. So deep is their poverty, indeed, that 
they are truly grateful for any trifle which the pilgrim 
chooses to bestow upon them. Worse still, if anything 
can be worse, the Princess was cheated by her builders, 
and the walls of the church are cracking very badly, 
owing to the insufficiency of their foundations, so that 
unless funds are forthcoming to carry out extensive 
and necessary repairs, the whole place must ere long 
fall into ruins. If by chance these lines should come 



340 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



under the eye of any co-religionist of those good sisters 
who has the wealth and the will to help them in a 
distress which is none of their own making, I can assure 
him or her that the work will be as good as it is 
needful. 

This story is a poignant example of the common folly 
of procrastination where the welfare of others is at stake, 
or the wishes of a lifetime have to be formally assured. 
The poor Princess should have studied her Montaigne, 
and learned wisdom from him. "Whatsoever I have to 
doe before death, all leasure to end the same seemeth 
short unto me, yea, were it but of one hour. Somebody 
not long since, turning over my writing-table, found by 
chance a memorial of something I would have done after 
my death. I told him (as, indeed, was true) that, being 
but a mile from my house, and in perfect health and 
lustie, I had made haste to write it, because I could not 
assure myself I should ever come home in safety. ... A 
man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready 
booted to take his journey, and, above all things, looke 
he hath then nothing to doe but with himselfe." 

Truly words of sense, which all of us would do well 
to learn by heart. 

Descending the Mount of Olives, we went for a ride 
round a great part of the walls of Jerusalem, so far as 
the Damascus gate and back again to the neighbourhood 
of that of Jaffa. Here we dismissed our horses, and, 
as it chanced to be Friday, walked through a new set 
of even filthier lanes than any with which I had made 
acquaintance, to the Place of Wailing of the Jews. It 
is a strait place in front of a fragment of the ancient 
wall, which measures between fifty and sixty feet in 
height. The lower courses of this wall are here built 
up of vast stones, laid (with what unheard-of labour 
no man will ever know), as I suppose, in the time of 
Solomon. 

Facing the wall about a score of Jews, men and women 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 



341 



of all ages, were engaged in " wailing." The women really 
wept with intervals for repose, but the men, as strange a 
collection of human beings as ever I saw, did not give way 
to their feelings to that extent. They rubbed their faces 
against the huge blocks, which occasionally they kissed, 
or read from the Scriptures, or muttered prayers. One 
tall, pale man attracted my particular attention. He was 
clad in what looked like a dirty night -garment, sur- 
mounted by a very greasy fur cap. Thrusting his nose 
literally into a crack in the wall, he rocked his body back- 
wards and forwards, pecking at the cavity like a nut-hatch 
at the bark of a tree, while he repeated prayers with the 
utmost fervour. When we arrived he was thus employed, 
nor had he ceased from his devotions as we departed. 
Nothing disturbed him. Even when a visitor walked up, 
held a camera to his head as though it were a pistol, 
touched the button and returned, remarking " Got him ! " 
he showed neither surprise nor anger. 

This scene is often described as touching. Personally 
I found it grotesque, even to sadness. In looking at these 
Jews, many of whom, I am told, live upon charity, there 
arose in my practical Western mind the words of the old 
saying : " God helps those who help themselves." If it 
pleases them to say their prayers in public, although, as 
I think, the practice must be comparatively recent, for I 
do not remember any allusion to it in the writings of 
the earlier pilgrims, by all means let them do so. But 
surely they might add to them other more practical 
attempts to recover the heritage of their race. For in- 
stance, they might persuade their wealthier brethren to 
buy out the Turk. There are a dozen gentlemen on the 
London Stock Exchange who could do this without much 
individual inconvenience. Why do not the Hebrew family 
put to this purpose a portion of the riches which certain 
of them possess in such abundance ? Surely it is only a 
question of price, and in such a cause mere money should 
not count. Are they held back by indifference and apathy 



342 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



— or, perchance, by the mysterious chain of some divine 
decree? Or they might drill, buy arms, and make an 
insurrection. I am informed, however, that they prefer to 
await the advent of their Messiah, a man of blood and 
power, a Jewish Napoleon, who when he appears will 
bring about the glory and temporal advancement of the 
race. 

To return; if this ceremony of wailing is imperative, 
why is it not celebrated at night ? It is inconceivable to 
me that people so earnest as these poor Jews doubtless 
are can carry on their devotions with a mind undisturbed 
by such surroundings as I saw. All about the principal 
actors, and mixed up with them, was a motley crowd — 
beggars, halt, maimed, and disease-stricken; boys, who 
drew down their eyelids within six inches of your face 
to reveal the shrivelled balls beneath ; men with tins the 
size of a half-gallon pot, which they shook before you, 
howling and vociferating for baksheesh, and hoc genus 
omne. Then, to complete the picture, in the background 
a small crowd of European and American sightseers, with 
their dragomen, some seated on boxes or rough benches, 
others standing in groups, laughing, smoking, and photo- 
graphing the more noteworthy characters. Imagine men 
who will submit to it all ! Imagine, also, what those fierce 
old heroes who held that wall for so long against the 
might of Rome would think and say of these descendants 
if they could see them thus mocked and humiliated at 
its foot! To one who, like the writer, in many ways 
admires and respects the Jew, who, moreover, has the 
deepest sympathy with him in the cruel sufferings and 
obloquy which for ages have been and are still heaped 
upon his ancient, chosen race, such a sight is nothing 
short of painful. For my part, were I born to this heritage 
I had rather make my petition in some rat-haunted cellar 
such as must be open even to the poorest. 

Yet their final chants, which I did not wait to hear, 
for the sights, sounds, and smells of the place were too 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 343 



much for ine, must be rather fine. Here is the translation 
of one of them according to Baedeker : — 

Leader. For the palace that lies desolate, 
Response. We sit in solitude and mourn. 
L. For the palace that is destroyed, 
R. We sit in solitude, &c. 
L. For the walls that are overthrown, 
R. We sit, &c. 

L. For our Majesty that is departed, 
R. We sit, &c. 

L. For our great men who lie dead, 
R. We sit, &c. 

L. For the precious stones that are burned, 
R. We sit, &c. 

L. For the priests who have stumbled, 
R. We sit, &c. 

L. For our kings who have despised Him, 
R. We sit in solitude and mourn. 

This wailing of the Jews is the last sight that I saw at 
Jerusalem, since at a desperately early hour on the follow- 
ing morning we bid farewell to the City of David, also very 
regretfully to David the dragoman, with whom we had a 
tender parting at the station. I can recommend him most 
confidently to any traveller in the Holy Land, who, I am 
sure, would find in him an intelligent and, what is more, a 
strictly honest guide. 

It is not probable that I shall look upon Jerusalem 
again, but I am glad exceedingly to have visited this 
ancient and most sacred town. "Were you not disap- 
pointed with the Holy Land ? " is a question which the 
returning traveller is often called upon to answer. For 
my part I was not in the least disappointed ; indeed its 
living and perpetual interest came home to me more closely 
than I had dared to hope. 

I know that many travellers are wont to give a different 
answer, but I submit respectfully that this is because they 
do not dig deep enough with the trowel of the imagina- 



344 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



tion. They suffer their minds, also, to be disturbed by the 
crop of petty annoyances and disillusionments which dog 
the feet of the pilgrim. The beggars, the extortions, the 
playful ways of the Turkish authorities, the difficulties of 
Eastern travel, all these distract and worry them, till at last 
they begin to lose grip of the root of the matter, which 
sends its fibres through every verse of the Old and New 
Testaments and bears fruit in the scheme of our Christian 
faith. Also in many instances the country and its asso- 
ciations depress them. A daily consideration of sites and 
scenes connected with the mighty career of Jesus Christ, 
and with His divine and fathomless sorrows upon earth, 
in itself tends to overwhelm the spirit, if the spirit is 
of that order which strives to understand, to appreci- 
ate, or to reconstruct. Many abandon the task, others 
have not the qualities necessary to its attempt. Still 
for those who can overcome these obstacles, who, above 
all, can sweep away doubt's strangling web ; who can 
lift the curtain of the generations and see afar the lamp 
of eternal truth burning, however dimly, a sojourn in the 
Holy Land is one of the highest and most excellent of 
educations. 

V. — -f~repeat, therefore, I am thankful that it should have 
fallen within the strangely varied experiences of my life. 
No man, as I suppose, can say that he understands the 
whole mystery of our religion. The veiled face of Truth, 
the secret meaning of things spiritual, are hidden from 
his purblind eyes. Stare and study how he will, at the 
best still he sees as in a glass darkly. Yet such study, if 
entered upon with a reverent and searching heart, does 
serve to kindle there an inner light and thus to illumine 
this glass, so that for him the shadows which move across 
it thenceforth acquire a somewhat sharper outline. At 
times even he becomes able, or thinks that he is able, to 
interpret more clearly the meaning of those fateful mes- 
sages that are written there which in the future, as in 
the past, must constitute one of the most earnest and im- 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 



345 



portant studies of mankind. The land we leave behind 
us, but, if we have travelled it aright, its immortal lessons 
will endure. 

When, after six hours' crawl through stormy weather, 
the traveller from J erusalem finally arrives at the Jaffa 
terminus, his first eager question is, " What of the sea, 
Cook ; what of the sea ? " Months before I had put the 
same question to the station-master at Charing Cross, and 
here in this far place the answer was much the same. 
" Moderate " was the dispiriting reply, and now, as then, I 
knew that trouble was ahead of us. 

Nor was I mistaken. There, a mile or more from land, 
rolled the Russian steamer that was to convey us to Port 
Said; and there, too, lay none other than the familiar 
Flora which bore us from Egypt to the shores of Cyprus. 
Thinking to earn a little extra profit, the agents of the 
Austrian Lloyd had collected a party of Cyprian pilgrims, 
purposing to dump them ashore at Jaffa, and proceed to 
Alexandria in time to ship the outward mails. But J affa 
is not a port to be treated in so cavalier a fashion, and 
thus it happened, as it has happened ten thousand times 
before, that the sea got up, and the pilgrims could not 
get off. 

The Flora, anxious to proceed upon her voyage, and 
always conscious of awaiting mails, kept up an incessant 
bellow with her siren. But no one took the slightest 
notice of these passionate appeals ; not a boat dared to 
attempt the eye of stormy water which foamed through 
the iron reef. Either the Flora must wait till the sea fell, 
or take her pilgrims on a gratis trip to Port Said, whence 
they would claim to be returned at the Company's ex- 
pense. In the end, after steaming about disconsolately 
till nightfall, putting to sea and returning again just 
to fill in the time, she chose the latter alternative and 
departed with a swan's song of farewell hoots, that pro- 
bably echoed with some accuracy the state of the temper 



346 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



of all on board. One consolation we had, however ; our 
ship could not depart, since she carried five hundred Rus- 
sian pilgrims whom she was bound to land, even if she 
rolled her topmasts out off Jaffa for a week on end. 

The few sights that I have described in a previous 
chapter once seen, Jaffa, from a traveller's point of view, 
becomes a hopeless place. Recognising this, we pro- 
ceeded to spend the day in doing nothing as comfortably 
as possible by walking out of the din and smells of the 
town to the lonely beach above. Here we sat down upon 
a bed of lovely cockle-shells tinted to every possible shade 
of pink and brown, and contemplated the roaring sea. In 
front of us, jutting through the foam and vanishing 
from time to time beneath the rushing combers, lay the 
massive boilers and other works torn from the hold of 
some wrecked steamer. The sight was suggestive enough, 
but perhaps there is no shore in the world where the sea 
has taken a greater toll of lives. What scenes of terror 
has this beach witnessed ! Here is one of them. Josephus, 
who says of the harbour "that a more dangerous situa- 
tion to shipping cannot be imagined," relates it of the 
drowning of certain Jews not long before the fall of 
Jerusalem. 

" At break of day the wind called by the people of the country 
the black north wind arose, and caused the most terrible tempest 
that had been known. The vessels of those who had escaped 
from J oppa, by being thrown against the rocks or dashed against 
each other, were broken to pieces. Some, who by dint of rowing 
endeavoured to escape being foundered by keeping the open sea, 
were tossed upon the mountainous billows, and then precipitated 
into the profound abyss of waters, and a great number of the 
vessels sunk. During this violent contention of the elements, 
the noise occasioned by the dashing of the vessels, and the 
lamentations and outcries of the miserable sufferers, were terri- 
fying beyond description. Many of the people were washed 
overboard by the waves, and either drowned or dashed to pieces 
against the rocks ; others fell upon their swords ; and numbers 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 347 



otherwise perished on board the wrecks. The water was 
coloured with the blood of the deceased whose carcases were 
dispersed upon the coast. During this shocking scene the 
Roman soldiers waited to destroy those who should be driven on 
shore alive. It is computed that the number of bodies driven 
on shore was 4200." 

Truly the mercies of ancient war were tender. 

The Anglo-Saxon merchant Saewulf in the year 1102 
here witnessed another disaster almost as awful. When 
they were eight days out from Cyprus — now it is a night's 
run — his vessel made Joppa, whereat he was filled " with 
an unexpected and extraordinary joy." On arrival at the 
port some one said to him, as he believed by " divine 
inspiration," what some one commonly says to the traveller 
who would disembark at Jaffa, " Sir, go on shore to-day 
lest a storm come on in the night, which will render it 
impossible to land to-morrow." 

Thereupon Saewulf, sensible man, was suddenly seized 
with a great desire of landing, and, in fact, did land 
without difficulty, and went to bed. Next morning on 
coming out of church he found great confusion raging 
in the place, and was carried along with the crowd to the 
shore— 

" When we saw the waves swelling higher than mountains, 
and innumerable bodies of drowned persons of both sexes 
scattered over the beach, while the fragments of ships were 
floating on every side. Nothing was to be heard but the roaring 
of the sea and the dashing together of the ships, which drowned 
entirely the shouts and the clamour of the people. Our own ship, 
which was a very large and strong one, and many others laden 
with corn and merchandise, as well as with pilgrims coming and 
returning, still held by their anchors, but how they were tossed 
by the waves ! how their crews were filled with terror ! how they 
cast overboard their merchandise ! what eye of those who were 
looking on could be so hard and stony as to refrain from tears ? 
We had not looked at them long before the ships were driven from 
then anchors by the violence of the waves, which threw them now 



348 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



up aloft, and now down, until they were run aground or upon the 
rocks, and there they were beaten backwards and forwards until 
they were crushed to pieces. For the violence of the wind would 
not allow them to put out to sea, and the character of the coast 
would not allow them to put in to shore with safety. Of the 
sailors and pilgrims who had lost all hope of escape, some re- 
mained on the ships, others laid hold of the masts or beams of 
wood ; many remained in a state of stupor, and were drowned 
in that condition, without any attempts to save themselves ; 
some (although it may appear incredible) had in my sight their 
heads knocked off by the very timbers of the ships to which 
they had attached themselves for safety ; others were carried 
out to sea on the beams, instead of being brought to land ; even 
those who knew how to swim had not strength to struggle with 
the waves, and very few thus trusting to their own strength 
reached the shore alive. Thus, out of thirty very large ships, 
of which some were what are commonly called dromunds, some 
gulafres, and others cats, all laden with palmers and mer- 
chandise, scarcely seven remained safe when we left the shore. 
Of persons of both sexes there perished more than a thousand 
that day. Indeed, no eye ever beheld a greater misfortune 
in the space of a single day, from all of which God snatched 
us by His grace, to Whom be honour and glory for ever. 
Amen." 

Such are two of the sea tragedies recorded of that 
cruel reef of rocks and the shell-strewn shore on which we 
sat. Doubtless it has seen others almost as bad ; indeed 
I have, I think, read of some in various writings, and many 
must have met with no historian. But although the words 
of Josephus, that a " more dangerous situation to shipping 
cannot be imagined," are nearly as true to-day as they 
were when he wrote them, the Turk does nothing to 
improve the port. It has struck me that he may have a 
reason for this beyond those which are customary through- 
out the Ottoman dominions. He may not wish that it 
should be made too convenient for the landing either of 
tourists — or of troops. 

Next morning, to my intense relief, broke calm and 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 349 



line, with a rapidly falling sea. Had it been otherwise we 
must have abandoned all hope of catching the P. and O. 
steamer Caledonian, by which our passages were booked 
at Port Said. Now this risk seemed done with. As we 
were not to go aboard till the afternoon I attended the 
Sunday morning service, which in Jaffa is held in the room 
of the Mission to Jews. The congregation was not large, 
still two or three were gathered together. Afterwards 
came the last, and not the best, of our many meals in 
the hostelries of Palestine, washed down with a stirrup 
cup of the sweet wine of the country, whereof by now I 
was heartily tired. Then, having carefully collected the 
tortoise Capernaum from the garden where he strayed and 
restored him to his basket, we marched off, and, reaching 
the landing-stage, were, without mishap, taken aboard the 
Russian ship by Cook's boatmen. These are as fine a set 
of black-skinned sailormen as ever I had to do with in any 
clime. Doubtless at this dangerous port they are picked 
with especial care. At any rate their stalwart appear- 
ance, skill at the oars and tiller, and the wild, inspiring 
song with which they drive the large boat through the 
gap in the reef and over the wide-arched billows, suggested 
confidence even to the fearful, and, for once, made parting 
with baksheesh a pleasure. 

About two o'clock we got aboard the clean-looking 
vessel, which was engined by an English firm, and did 
not smell half so badly of pilgrims as I was warned that 
she would. As she was not to sail till five, however, I 
amused myself by sitting on the poop and watching the 
humours of the deck. They were various. First of all, 
a bag of beans, which was being shipped, burst, and on 
those Russian sailors was imposed the Psyche-like task 
of collecting each wandering seed. Then I became aware 
of a great commotion near the funnel, and was informed 
by my stalwart friend, the captain of Cook's boatmen, 
who still lingered on board, that it was caused by Jews 
wailing, a public ceremony, I had imagined, which they 



350 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



reserved for the wall of Jerusalem. I went to inspect, and 
found a family of Persian Hebrews in a very parlous state. 

They were all squatted on the deck, the woman alter- 
nately weeping loudly and blowing her nose with her 
fingers, the husband sitting by wrapped in depression, 
a son of about ten now uttering loud and sympathetic 
yells and now playing with little bits of wood at some 
game upon the deck, and other offspring, all more or 
less excited and vociferous. This was their hard case. 
Actuated by religious impulse they had travelled from 
Persia, or elsewhere, with a view of being, in due course, 
buried at Jerusalem — and now the port officials declined 
to allow them even to disembark. There is a Turkish 
law that no Jew may set foot in the Holy Land, 
although, in fact, Jews there are as plentiful as black- 
berries upon an autumn hedge. The explanation of 
this discrepancy between rule and fact is, of course, 
baksheesh. For about five pounds a head, judiciously 
distributed, any number of Jews may proceed unmo- 
lested to Jerusalem and spend the rest of their days 
there. These particular unfortunates, however, had 
neglected to provide themselves with the necessary cash, 
and as the case was beyond the reach of promiscuous 
and private charity, nothing remained for them except 
to return to Persia, or some other distant place of origin. 
And return they did, at any rate to Port Said, where, 
on the following morning, I saw them being bundled 
off the ship with little ceremony. 

Another more amusing sight, for the Jew comedy 
had its tragic side, was afforded by a Mussulman who, 
at a certain hour, was moved to make his devotions. 
Accordingly, having selected a nice clean spot upon 
the deck, and made sure that it faced towards Mecca, 
he went off and fetched his prayer carpet. Meanwhile, 
gradually the ship swung round with the tide or current. 
Back came the Faithful, spread his carpet and began 
the accustomed prayers and prostrations. In the midst 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 351 



of one of the latter his eye caught the ball of the wester- 
ing sun. I do not know what happens to the Moslem 
who prays with his face in the wrong direction, some 
such results, perhaps, as in the Middle Ages were fabled 
to follow the repetition of the Lord's Prayer backwards 
by witches and warlocks. At any rate I cannot often 
remember seeing a follower of the prophet so visibly 
upset. With a bound he snatched up his carpet and, 
rushing to the other side of the ship, spread it and 
began again in the greatest of hurries. 

Now a furious quarrel which had sprung up between 
the boatmen who lie about the steamer's sides forces 
our attention. Two of them rave at each other ; they 
gesticulate, they lift oars and boathooks, and threaten 
sudden death. Anticipating murder, I inquire the reason 
of the feud, and am informed that it is about three half- 
pence. When I look again — lo, these maddened ruffians, 
seated comfortably cheek by jowl in the same boat and 
full of mutual good feeling, are engaged in helping 
another craft to reach the companion. 

This boat is laden with a fat and frightened-looking 
Turk, accompanied by his harem, their progeny, a huge 
basket of oranges, a wardrobe done up in sacks and blue 
handkerchiefs, several feather-beds — one for each lady, I 
suppose — and a fine selection of jars and other pottery. 
The children, who are dumb with terror, having probably 
never seen the sea before, are passed up the ship's side by 
the leg or arm as may happen, exactly as though they 
were so many porkers. Then come the fat wives. Many 
are the false attempts which they make, always at the 
wrong time, to reach the grating from the tossing boat. 
At length the exasperated sailors, clutching them with 
unhallowed hands, drag them thither by main force, and 
with a rush and a gasp they waddle to the deck and sink 
down, mere dishevelled heaps of palpitating flesh. Next 
comes their lord, somehow, his turban all awry, a very 
different person, doubtless, to the stately- looking Moslem 



352 A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



we may have met walking the streets of Jerusalem and 
glancing round him with the eye of a master. After the 
man the feather-beds and the oranges, which get spilt ; 
then a shrill whistle, a hoot from the siren, and the 
engine begins to bite at the clanking anchor-chain. 

The screw turns, the vessel swings round to forge 
ahead; the great blue jelly-fish, fringed about with a 
purple more glorious than that of Tyre, begin to float 
past hurriedly and be crumpled up in the churning 
waters; the farewell shouts of the boatmen die away, 
and presently we are in the silence of the sea running 
towards the falling night. Thirty minutes more and the 
sandy coast of Palestine, with its long background of grey 
and desolate hills, fades slowly to a line behind us, that 
grows ever thinner and fainter till at length it seems to 
sink into the deep and vanishes. 

Here this humble record of a journey, which to him 
who sets it down at any rate was of interest, ought by 
rights to end. Yet as it is but human to smile at the 
misfortunes of our fellows, the reader may wish to learn 
what befell us at Port Said. 

The caviar on board the Russian boat was excellent, 
though as there was something of a sea, I alone could eat 
it, but it is impossible to say as much of the sleeping 
accommodation. At the first streak of dawn I rose and 
went on deck, for we were near Port Said. Presently out 
of the grey mists of the morning I saw a majestic steamer 
appear upon our bow, running westward at about fifteen 
knots. Evidently she had cleared from Port Said so 
soon as daylight made it safe for her to round the 
breakwater. 

" That's the Caledonian" said a voice at my side. 

" What ? " I gasped, " the Caledonian ? Why, I have 
booked passages in her, and she doesn't sail till noon 
to-day." 

" It's her all the same. I have shipped in her too 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 353 



often to be mistaken," answered the voice with calm 
conviction. 

The Caledonian it was sure enough, who with a lack of 
principle unworthy of so fine a ship, had calmly departed 
from Port Said six hours before her time, leaving her 
wretched passengers from the Holy Land to find their way 
home as best they might. As the Jaffa boat was one day 
late she might be two days late ; nobody ever dreams of 
waiting for a boat that has to do business with Jaffa. 

Very, very sadly did I return to that crowded cabin to 
impart the news to my still slumbering companion. At 
this time of the year all the liners from the far East pass 
the Canal full to the last berth. Moreover, to a man in a 
hurry to get home, the prospect of a long sojourn at a Port 
Said hotel, while waiting for a ship, is not pleasant. I 
knew it, for, as I have said, once in past years that experi- 
ence had been mine. No wonder, then, that we were 
depressed. As we dropped past the breakwater, however, 
we perceived that the Orient liner Oroya was finishing 
taking in her coal, and hope rose in our breasts. Perhaps 
on her we could find a berth, though, evidently, there was 
no time to lose, for these mail steamers do not wait. As 
the last basket of coal comes on board, before it comes 
indeed, up goes the anchor and they forge ahead to sea. 

We anchored, and then followed about as tumultuous 
a two hours as I have ever spent. With my eye on 
the rapidly emptying coal barges of the Oroya, I was 
anxious to disembark, but this was just what I found 
it impossible to do. No local Cook appeared, for it was 
still early, but his dragoman, a cross-eyed son of Ham, 
of whom I have no pleasing recollection, put me off 
with soft words as to getting ashore. At length we man- 
aged it, without his assistance, and then came troubles 
innumerable. The luggage was carted off to the custom- 
house, I know not why, and leaving it there my nephew 
and I cantered — on our own legs — to and fro along the 
hot and sandy streets of Port Said. There was a British 

z 



354 



A WINTER PILGRIMAGE 



India steamer in, and under the guidance of a black 
youth whom we had picked up, as it was nearest, I 
visited the office of this line, only to find that she was a 
cargo boat, though willing by special arrangement to take 
passengers with time upon their hands. Then we started 
off for the Orient Office more than a mile away, and there, 
by the courtesy and kindness of the agent, Mr. Stapledon, 
succeeded in securing an empty second-class cabin, for 
the ship which came from Australia was crowded. 

The rest is too mixed and in a sense too trivial to 
describe, but the end of it was that perspiring and utterly 
worn-out we did get aboard the Oroya just before she 
sailed. So we departed from Port Said, leaving behind 
us an unrecoverable portmanteau, various other packages, 
and last, but not least, the unhappy Capernaum, who in 
the mad scurry had been abandoned in his yellow basket 
in a secluded corner of the Russian steamer. 

As the great liner got under weigh, above the clank- 
ing of cables, the roaring of steam, and the shouting of 
the coalboys pushing off their empty floats, I screamed 
the details of my loss to the kindly Mr. Stapledon in 
the boat beneath, imploring him to rescue poor Caper- 
naum, who I feared would starve to death, and to forward 
him by the first opportunity. A month or so later I 
attended at Ditchingham station, and there in the same 
yellow basket, carefully covered with canvas, was Caper- 
naum, depressed by his long, cramped wanderings, but 
still hearty. Now, as I have said, he inhabits the garden, 
but disliking our climate, which forces him to spend so 
much of his time underground, continually attempts to 
return to the Sea of Galilee via the stableyard and the 
orchard. 

So after days of swift steaming through quiet seas 
we came to Marseilles. Thence I travelled by train to 
Paris, where the bookstalls were laded with caricatures 
of her Majesty of a nature offensive to her subjects, 1 and 

1 Alas ! that I must now write — of her late Majesty. 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 355 



the railway officials had employed their leisure by inscrib- 
ing on the iron girders legends in honour of our enemies, 
such as " A has les Anglais ! " and Ci Gloire au General 
Cronje I " 

Thus ended this Winter Pilgrimage in the year of our 
Lord 1900. Now when it is over — one more of life's 
turned leaves — I am very glad that it was undertaken 
and accomplished. 



THE END 



Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &• Co. 
Edinburgh & London 



